Social Distancing

Between me and my phone is not going well. If we are more than 6 feet apart for too long, I start to panic.

On the bright side, yesterday I skipped for the first time in 3 years. Not long... about 1/4 block. Skipping is one of my all time favorite things, but last time I attempted it, about a year and a half ago, I nearly fell flat on my face. My body remembered how to skip, of course; I don't think it will ever forget such poetic freedom, but my legs wouldn't cooperate. More on this later.

Because yesterday,  and let's just say for now, without jinxing it, I could do this thing as I did before.

And you can call me Ocho!

I swear, every time I type an I on my phone, it says 8 instead. So I'm thinking I might have to rename myself for the time being and refer to myself in the third person. Today, 8 went to the park and 8 saw a pilliated woodpecker...

Serves me write for using my cell phone for writing, but I can't complain cause I kind of like the thought of being Ocho for a while.

All the wild places you held oranges

Somehow our family journal--our Coronavirus edition that is--has become a 3 part entry including a drawing of the day, a recap, and a poem.

I was just finishing my entry, which included a still life sketch of a bowl of oranges TCF brought to me and as I lingered with the beauty of the citrine queen, so taken by its smiling perfection, its sacrifice and its lace, I got to thinking about all the places I have held oranges in my hands like, naming a few, all those soccer half times growing up at LA County parks, oranges in Torrance, or in Mexico after you washed them with  aqua purificada and then all those times for juicing and then in college when you ate very little because you thought you were fat and all the times they looked different and wondered is this an orange? And the little bitty teeny tiny oranges that grew in Ma's backyard next to the lemon bushes with all those sunstreaked waxy so green they were almost black leaves I'd give anything to see now, to rub against my cheeks, white blossoms, like Heaven, in my hair, raining down in soft focus as though it would last forever.

And all that thinking and linking of citrus memories got me writing so much I thought it might make a good prompt and I oughta write it down and share. And you'll see for yourself: It's juicy. 🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊🍊

And for my next act...

Immediately after I finished reading my first write--a rambling, incoherent, pleading, longwinded, broken poem about "the other side," responding to a prompt offered by one of my beloved FridayWriters, Zoom cut me off.

"Enough of you and your drama!" it said. "You're out!"

When i reconnected, a lifetime in a moment later, back from outer space, my banishment, I came to the sound of laughter, a chorus of welcoming.

It was difficult to trust and I wondered what my birth was like and how much our first breath and those who witness it,courriers the rest of our lives.

In this new Zoomscape, so much forgotten gets remembered. Like all the times a simple conversation felt like walking on icy sidewalks, the foundation evershifting, true intimacy out of synch.

Tastes like memories

How does that work? 

And 
Does anyone remember the aloe plant in the yoga room? The new one that recently got separated from its roots when I transferred it to a bigger pot?
Did you know I replanted it, leaves atop roots, fresh soil, and hoped for the best? And then
Did anyone see it starting to turn brown? Infected with isolation?
Changing deserts, so many miles from home?
Dying?
I don't know what it means or if it means anything at all 
other than life willing itself to live but
today it is sparkling green
a fountain of emerald youth
risen and rising from the almost dead

The Music of Failure by Amber Stoner

Today's prompt, The Music of Failure, was offered by a student in my Weds group this morning and boy did it get us singing on the page! This response comes from Amber Stoner, whom I have been writing with for 10 years. I am blessed with her heart, smile, friendship, wisdom, musicality, generosity, and the many countless gifts offered weekly in her writing. Thank you Amber!💙

The Music of Failure

The music of failure sounds like waaa-waa. The first note followed by that lower thudding note. Is it scratchy, is it quiet? Does it chime or rhyme? Does the music of failure bring us closer together or drive wedges of clanging cymbals (symbols?) between us? Is it loud, is it cowbell, is it a crying, a wailing a gnashing of teeth? Does the music of failure ripple across the world, does it amplify or deaden when the waves of failure hit other waves of failure? Is the music of failure like the static we used to see on tv's or the radio stations we tried to tune in using the knob on old radios? Does the music of failure require a player or it is naturally-occurring? Does it emanate effortlessly or is the music of failure wrenched from wretched bodies plant, animal, mineral? Does the music of failure harmonize with the music of success? Do they cancel each other out or run parallel, never intersecting? Can I choose to listen or choose to learn or choose to redefine the music of failure? Is it in a majorly minor key or a minorly major key? Does it race along in cut time or plod along in largo? Can we turn the volume up or turn the volume down? 

Can we learn to dance our own spectacular rhythm in the music 9f failure?

Tumbleweed

I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I watched it from the moment it rolled flawlessly, stridently itself in sync with the velocity of weather, the precursor to the wheel, into my western window and followed it across the living room palette of windows while the boys went about their duties unaware—filling out forms online, drawing cartoons—as far east as I could chase as it rolled on toward France Avenue. I thought, foolishly, that it might stop at the intersection before rolling itself into traffic, but by the time I caught up with it out of my bedroom window, it was gone.

RIP John Prine!

I wish I'd met you sooner

when I was young and misunderstood

I'm a bit of a late bloomer

your words reached me when they could

driving from Sedona to here 

trapped in a Lexus I couldn't steer
I couldn't cry and I couldn't moan
I couldn't speak, my heart was stone
but your melodies kept me breathing
and believing
all those miles so many states home

I'd forget you and remember
always grateful for your cheer
We sang you one December
with our takeout and our beer
And that early September afternoon
along Superior's shore
a busker singing of paradise doom
welcomed my broken heart like never before

I'll miss you now and forever
like the words of all your songs
Grateful for our time together
you've been with me all along
For the songs you sang in me
and the range you took my voice
campsong singing beneath the apple trees
knowing every moment is a choice

I'll miss you now and forever
like the words of all your songs
Grateful for our time together
you've been with me all along

Instacart

In case you were wondering, we are number 7,398 in line to get a text message reply from Instacart. Not like it's urgent or anything, but we were hoping they'd drop off the soymilk they forgot when they delivered our groceries last week.

Just a little longer wait than the DMV is all.

And you still gotta laugh

Yesterday Jude and I hid out in the back of the house and self-taught ourselves to crochet while TCF Zoomed privately with clients in the living room. After an hour or so I had to go to the bathroom and in the hallway I overheard TCF say to his person struggling to figure out Zoom, "Um... John... I think you're upside down."

We're still learning.

How Had I Never Noticed Them Before?

Today was our hill walking day, convenient since the park by our house sits in a huge crater. It's a heck of a sledding hill, spacious, and has become a main character in this chapter of our lives, vastly important. We're there every day now; it's the "outting," the daily thing we plan our days around.

On hill days, we walk up and down the steep green dunes for cardio,  interlaced with loops around the bowl dodging people, dogs, basketballs, bikers, and stray bubbles desperate mothers are blowing for their toddlers.

 "Does she not know that's not a good idea?" I ask the boys, who struggle to put two and two together.

"Nevermind," I say as we head up the hill, our colorful shoes a sight for soar eyes in the sunlight, against the spring grass. We pause at the top, looking down on all the activity, somehow a little askew. If you didn't know, would you know? Or would you miss it entirely, even though it was right in front of you? Would you see what you wanted to see? What you always saw?

Jude pointed ahead. Look, he said, trees.  Two trees. Shadows, he said.

It was impossible not to accept this beautiful gift as magical. As though they had appeared there just for us.

What were they before I saw them  as they were? Before Jude pointed them out? Blobs? Static? Darkness? Or did I not see them at all? But how could you miss them? Two enormous tree shadows, limbs like skyscrapers projected in front of us, lacy, still,and reaching.  Mesmerized, we stood there and watched for a few minutes, silent.

 It was like the other day when the leaves blew toward us like so many welcoming hands waving us toward shelter.

Leona's Moon Cookies

I've been amazed at how many recipes have been going around and how much I've been paying attention. Usually I delete delete delete, but now these recipes are sacred offerings. In years to come, they will tell the story we are living now, layered in the stories from which they came. The personal messages texted and emailed into the ingredients will evoke the zeitgeist of the Covid era, compiled in recipe books to come: Cooking with Covid, The Coronavirus Cookbook, Gluten Free Coronavirus Cuisine...

I've been asking Ma for the lemon poppyseed recipe since this all began. "Gram's"," I said, "the ones she always kept on the freezer."

"There's no lemon" she insisted every time I asked.  But I must forget because I always use lemon because in my heart my mother, grandma, and great grandma are all smiling at me beneath a lemon tree in Palm Springs.

The next day Ma sent 

five recipes including an oldie from my first husband for Carmelized Onion Gouda Quesadillas. It's been more than 12 years since we spoke, but I forwarded him the email right away. "Look what i found!" I said.

"Ooooh, those were good," he wrote back immediately. 

I was so proud after Jude and I made these today. I took pics and sent them to Ma. She wrote back, kvelling:

OMG. You made them. Did you use an electric mixer?  Did JUDE make them with you?  Are they yum?  They look a little under baked. Usually they are more golden in color especially at the edges.  I am so jealous.

Enjoy!!!

Thank You Writers!

It was so wonderful to write with you all yesterday at the Community Writing All-Write. I am grateful for your writing and sharing. As always, there was so much love and prayer infused in your words.

I thought I'd miss shopping more than I do. I admit it: I'm a shopping addict, the last of the greater intoxicants that had me under spell for most of my life. It doesn't get me into too much trouble, but it keeps me away from the here and now from time to time, gives me a break from chaos (momentarily). Ha! Spellcheck wrote "Ommentarily." Like it.

The point is I don't feel like shopping at all. Hunting for tp is not a good time, bargain shopping for a good kill. Now that shopping has become more of a sport, I'm bored, exhausted, not playing,  edged out of a competition I have no chance at winning.

We try not to talk about it, how low we are getting on supplies. Certainly we don't ask. Occassionally I'm tempted to ask around, call my friends. "So.... you got any? How many rolls you got left? Where'd you find it...?" But there are just some things we don't discuss.

The truth is, humans have always been far more valuable than gold, stories traded, hopeful and mundane, currency of the heart. Sapphire eyes lock six feet apart. Words strung like pearls around the neck for comfort, to remember, to receive, to pass along.

"Today the sink, tomorrow the stove!"

Is what I screamed last night after a day's frustration, after taking apart the pipes in the bathrooms sink, after Drano, after Zooming with Jude's dad and still not being able to fix the clog. He said we could go over to his house and pick up the auger in the basement.

"What does it look like?" we said, being non-handy people.

He sent a picture from the Home Depot website along with specific directions through his basement, "to the little room past the furnace room and to the left of the washer on the bottom shelf," where it will most likely be, "but blue, not orange."

It seemed like an odyssey, but we found it. Together, TCF and Jude augered and fixed the sink.  It took putting the pipes back together several times. It took learning to take that unruly auger like a bull by the horns. It took patience and Youtube and our family team. It took all we had. On any other day, it would have taken a miracle. It took a pandemic. And we did it.

And then the burner went out on the stove. Just stopped working. No heat when heating up the morning kettle for coffee. "Is this some sort of intensive gratitude training immersion?" I shouted in not so many kind words. Like, okay, now I should be grateful because we still have three burners? Such abundance! And when the heat stops working, do we tell ourselves, "well, at least we have blankets?" Yes, there is always more to be grateful for in comparison. There is always someone, somewhere who has it worse. But is that supposed to make me feel better? Shut me up? Does defaulting to comparison negate the feelings I must feel in order to move on and do what needs to be done? Is there space to feel compassion and grief and frustration? Is there space to feel like giving up when so many people are out there saving lives?

Usually when something breaks, I call someone to fix it. "I'm a Jew!" I say, "I can't fix anything!" I've lived in perfect harmony with this arrangement my entire life, having learned early that it's okay to pay someone for help, especially when it comes to paying someone for the skills you are lacking and for the tasks you are physically unable to do. Now, with no choice but to fix things ourselves, I'm beginning to see that maybe we're way more capable than we thought. I'm beginning to see how many things I believed to be true about myself were confining, not helpful. First Zoom and Paypal, now plumbing. Hot damn!

One of my students recently told me "because they're all I have," when I enviously remarked upon how supportive her family is to her—her husband and two teenage kids— and how much she leans on them for encouragement and support. It seems they're always cheering each other on from the sidelines. I was deeply moved by her reply. "Because they're all I have."

"Well, that ain't my family," I joked, without giving due credit to my little family, who may or may  not cheer me on, but it never occurred to me to ask. In my family-of-origin, we did not ask; that may have been deadly. But this is now.  And this is my family today. And this is what cheering on looks like during a pandemic. And in this very moment and for quite a while it seems, when it comes down to it, they're all I have. Together, we just might fix that stove. Together, with enough cheering, we might realize who we are as individuals.

And that we're going to be okay.