The Life of Smoke

This because it's so passionate and because I've been swallowed whole by life and can't manage to post...this, written a few nights ago

By my 8-year-old daughter, Zoe

In the years 2005-2006 I’ve been noticing the pressure life gives you. The questions it asks. The things you do that tears the life apart. I’ve been noticing the fear in people’s eyes. I’ve seen tobacco in places that people don’t think you’re going to look because they’re hiding it from you. I’ve seen how people act when they’re caught smoking. I’m going to tell you a story of the way I’m thinking of it, but I’m not just going to tell you about tobacco and stuff like that. I’m going to tell you about the smoke that factories make because this is all about smoke. At the ending of the story I want you to think about how this is to your life. I want you to know that the smoke that factories make kill the fresh air, and the smoke that you inhale makes you get cancer and you get addicted to it. I want you to know how hard this is to let go of. Think about it and let’s let our story begin.



(we can only hope that the rest of the story is soon to follow. Maybe she's just watching me waiting to find out what happens.)

Fresh Grass

It was simply the smell of freshly cut grass that hit me today as I crossed the lawn to the library. The smell of freshly cut grass that transported me back to Boulder, Colorado 1979 when I was a 19-year-old gardener on campus for the summer. The fresh, perfect smell of cut grass that I inhaled day after day that dry, hot summer as I pushed the lawn mower across miles of green lawn under the tower of the Rockies. A job that had me watering, mowing, cutting back bushes, picking up litter, and trimming trees with my friend Greg, whose love for Neil Young rivaled mine, becoming competitive in a game we played where we’d recite a single line from a certain song challenging the other to name both song and album.

It was simply the smell of freshly cut grass that transported me today, out of my life; the decision whether to let my husband continue his dance with the ballerina even though her husband and I have ended ours; the brewing drama with my 11-year-old on whether to let her quit the gymnastics team because it leaves her little time to play with other kids; the decision of which book idea I could actually follow through with; the anxiety of whether the new and expensive dress my mother bought me for my birthday is too small and whether it’s too late to return it; the image of my friend who is very sick and possibly dying repeatedly slapping his young son on the back yesterday because the boy wouldn’t listen to him and how the moment stood still for me as I watched him strike his son with hands gone weak because of an illness that is robbing him of all of his strength, his ability to speak and to parent the way he might have imagined.

Grass that transported me past the business of money and whether I am doing my artist husband a favor by bailing him out of being broke each month; whether I’m doing the ballerina a favor by sharing my husband so she doesn’t feel nearly as lonely with hers; the scheme to stop answering my office phone in case it’s her husband, a man I am trying to rinse from my psyche because his departure leaves me confronting my own loneliness and pain.

It was simply the smell of that grass that took me, let me breath in and forget, for a moment as I crossed the lawn today and entered the library.

Not Like You Knew

It’s not as if you knew your life needed changing
What was it you used to bitch about?
What got you down?
That he didn’t make enough money?
That the house was always a wreck?
It’s not as if you knew your life needed changing
That one kiss under the awning of a Chinese restaurant
in the rain
could unleash
a whole new you
Change your life

Janice and her family moved to the country last year to change their life
They wanted a slower, natural, earthy, small town life
Her strong, smart husband built them a home overlooking a valley
where they could watch hawks and eagles
Janice and the boys learned to ride
They learned to ride horses
But then little Sam, his head started leaking
And 66 nights later
66 nights at children’s hospital
that’s how many nights her husband has slept
sprawled out on a chair next to Sam’s bed
funny, sweet, sassy Sam who razzes the nurses
Now Janice and the two other boys live that other life
the one they made the changes for

And even if you know what’s coming
The man in the walker coming out of the medical building today
How the walker got caught in the door
How I didn’t help him
But thought instead of my father
Able bodied but not forever
Because it’s not like you knew your life needed changing
But it must have
Because a kiss under an awning of a Chinese restaurant
in the rain
can set the whole thing off

**Inspired by Joan Logghe’s new book of poems called Rice

Ethics, order and timing

And so, because I am not a romantic
When I got together with my husband and the ballerina last weekend
limbs colliding, on our backs, in her bed
The candles, the wine
Her unauthorized breathing
The way her eyes closed and face clenched when she came
What it feels like to let go like that in front of another person
her lover’s wife, your husband’s lover
How three became one
how it was she who held me as I came
His mouth on me, her hands clutching my arm
How they both went quiet afterwards
Resting with me as if we’d all made that train wreck of a journey together

And we had

Because I am not a romantic
What occurred to me afterwards was this:

what are the ethics and the obligation as to where the husband finally lays his seed? Does he leave it in the wife to show her where his real love lies? Where does that seed need to come to rest?

Ethics, order and timing

Following sadness to its true home

Bear with me because I’m going to talk about allergy medicine for a second and then I’m going to talk about sadness.

Because I got this cold last week; sore throat, sniffles, and it just depleted me. Bad timing too because I was set to start teaching two new classes and the last thing I wanted to do was drag my sorry, exhausted ass into the room and launch a class like that.

That’s when I remembered this allergy medicine that I took a couple of years ago when I had this bad cold, and how as soon as I took the medicine, I mean, within minutes, I went from limpy, sad, sniffly woman to supersonic, fantastic, let’s take over the world, and run a marathon after that and get laundry done and edit 20 pages and make a four course meal for my family, which was fantastic, but which is why they tell you on the package not to take more than one of these little white pills every 12 hours.

But the thing is, the funny thing is, when you get to about hour 10 in your day and the medicine begins to wear down, you start to feel your sore throat again, and the sniffles come back too, which makes me wonder if that allergy medicine is tackling that cold at all or whether it’s just masking it, shooting me out into the world in total spastic denial, and then what have I really accomplished?

And this gets me thinking about sadness and all the ways I’ve masked it, tried to get away from it. I realize that I could spend the rest of my life fixing and changing things that I don’t like, that made me sad, but it would be like putting out little fires that once extinguished would just light up again in new places.

And so what I’m wondering is what would it be like to follow sadness back to its true home?

Because the things that make me sad, and I know reading this might trouble you because these things might make you sad too, like if your husband really did love the ballerina very much and if he didn’t know how to answer you when you asked him whether he’d leave her if you asked him to. Or if the ballerina’s husband, someone you love, wasn’t able to return this love in the way you wanted him to, and what a heartbreak that could be. And even though those things can feel horribly sad, I’m starting to believe that they’re just triggers for a much deeper sadness that isn’t just distinct to me, but maybe to you too. A birthright we all share in some way.

Because you can live a life of preference; this over that. You can try to eliminate the things that hurt, that crack you open and you can stay away from the edge too. You can tell lies if you like. Especially to the people you love. You can even make people say what you want them to say and get them to change, FOR YOU, so you won’t feel sad anymore. You can run from sadness for a very long time. And of course they have lots of sadness medicine too, like Prozak, which many people I love swear by.

But all the while, I’m telling you, your sadness is there, waiting, like a perfectly patient friend, waiting for you to get tired of fixing things and manipulating people or drinking too much or watching TV. or whatever it is we do to numb the pain. What I’m saying is the things that make us sad, they’re just distractions, even the ballerina and her husband, people I deeply love. Their job as problems is to merely trigger sadness so that I might finally find my way home to where sadness really lives. So that I might stop putting out the little fires that trouble me, so that I might finally sit down with the big daddy of pain and let him do his thing to me. Call me crazy, but I believe in my heart that that’s where the healing happens.

But walking headfirst into sadness isn’t for the faint of heart. And it’s not very American either. We don’t like sadness: it’s not very productive and it troubles people. They might not want to be around you.

But what if that journey to sadness’ true home, what if it wasn’t crazy, what if it saved your life?

My Dance Teacher

“Stop trying to be above it all,” my dance teacher said as she dug her thumbs into my hip joints. “Stop trying to be all up here,” she said, throwing her arms over her head and gesturing something sexy and exotic, her chin jutting out in pure pose. “I want you down here, down in your hips,” she hissed. “ I want you to be like Katarina Witt. I want you to glide. I don’t want to see your feet leave the ground. So just stop, stop trying to be above it all.”

F

Freedom

Today, out of the blue, the slightest hint of freedom like some exotic, warm wind blowing in off the coast of nowhere. Freedom like the sudden surprise of night blossoms; heady and sweet and impossible to locate in the darkness of the yard. Freedom and sweetness that says soon, spring, survivor, you.

In bed the night before I’d told my husband that I felt trapped. The kind of trapped that inspires insane escape routes like getting yourself sick. The kind of plan you have to immediately apologize to god for.

But now this sweet rogue wind, a window where there had been a wall.


Friendly

The black woman in the post office line today who warmly gestured for me to go ahead
of her because I’d been taping boxes in the corner and she believed that technically made me first. This beautiful, sweet smelling cocoa woman in her 50’s dressed in leather; skirt and jacket and high pointy boots, coordinated in colors of pumpkin, persimmon and rust. When she pulled out her checkbook it was orange. I meant to tell her how great she looked, but mostly I just wanted our eyes to meet because I wanted us to see each other, but I didn’t say anything. I was strangely shy. On the way out she looked at me and I only caught the tail of her glance, but she smiled and I meant to smile back, but she turned and was gone.


Forever

When we were deciding whether to have kids our biggest fear was that we’d split up. So we took a 20-hour drive to New Mexico with the intention to make our decision on the road. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere we realized that while we could say words like Forever and Never and Always, they wouldn’t mean anything. We realized if we wanted to stay together it wouldn’t be because we promised we would, but because of how we treated each other each day. That this good day would get us to tomorrow and a good tomorrow would get us to the next day. Of course it hasn’t been all good days, but somehow we have been able to cobble together enough goodness to make it here, 16 years later, in this old house at the end of the road, with palm trees, and possums and people, our children.


French kiss

I did kiss her. More importantly I let myself go. We’d tried it once before and after the initial tongue and a little exploration I felt the line, the place where I could really fall into her, but I was afraid, so I pulled back. But this time I let myself go. Her lips were soft and her tongue moved slowly. I felt the tiny sprouting of hairs around her upper lip and I wondered if she waxed hers like I did mine. Men are both rough and soft. They push and I like that. But she was all soft and that’s how I fell into her.


Friends

The ones who are still listening to me a year later and who have never told me what to do. The ones who kept their fears to themselves because they trust me and they love me and because they don’t really know what I should do, even when I have asked them. The friend who I hadn’t seen in years who grabbed my hand the other day at the ferry and said, “You’re very vulnerable, aren’t you?” And left it at that. Friends like that.


Fruit

My eight-year-old told me yesterday that she wants to go on a diet because she is fat. She is a little chubby in that way that small children can be; their stomachs distended, bellies popping over. And it doesn’t help that her older sister is such a stick. We were standing in the kitchen and I got down on my knees. I put my arms on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. I said I thought she was beautiful, that she looked just like mama.

beauty

I told her, "I think I'm trying to write about beauty, though it's not always pretty."

And she said, "no, it rarely is, beauty is rarely pretty."

The Death of Innocence

She’d crafted the mask out of an Almond Joy candy box, the kind of over sized candy box you get at the movies and she’d been to the movies that day, earlier, with her friend Jane, but now she’d been called home to sit in the garden with her mother and her father’s lover, the ballerina.

She’d crafted the mask out of the candy box, had cut two holes out from the center for her eyes and left the rest uncut so that her mouth, the full expression of her face wouldn’t be seen.

She’d planned it with her mother, knew the ballerina was coming and still, she didn’t know what to say. “You don’t have to say anything,” her mother offered, “we just want to get together.”

She’d crafted the mask out of an oversize Almond Joy candy box after she’s picked up her father’s journal a week earlier and after she’d read what he wrote, that the ballerina, her parent’s friend, wife of John, and mother to Jessie, Joseph and Gale, was the best lover that her father had ever had.

“You don’t offend me,” were the first words that came out of her 10-year-old mouth when the dancer walked up the front steps. And when she casually offered up the zucchini muffins that she had brought with her, the girl raised her eyebrows, “muffins?” she said, “no thanks.”

She crafted the mask because she didn’t know what to say now that she knew everything but understood nothing. And did this have anything to do with why her mother had seemed so sad all summer? And how she, the girl had tried to be better, wrote her mother notes like “mom, we love you, who wouldn’t?” How she hoped that if she just loved her mother harder and stronger her mother would be happy again. The girl's love could save her.

Now the ballerina was talking about love, how it was all about love. How she loved her husband, and how she loved the girl’s mommy as well as the girl’s daddy. The woman told the girl that she too, all of the children, were very loved, that there was enough love for everyone.

The girl wears a candy box mask with the words joy printed on the cardboard between the eyes, There is joy between the eyes but not within them.

A ten-year old girl sits in a garden with her mother and her father’s lover wearing an Almond Joy candy box mask.

The Sea

For nights now my dreams are only of the water.

In one I’m in a swimming pool at night with other people and someone tells me there’s going to be a healing and the healer is none other than my father. I ask a woman in the pool how it’s going to happen and she looks surprised. She says big changes are coming and I can see that one of her eyes has already started changing, that a green crust has begun to cover one of her lids. My lover is in the pool and he swims over to me and then dives down, swimming like some plank fish over the top of me. He turns around and swims over me again.

In another dream I’m in the deep, darkest part of the ocean watching a big machine with a hook dip people into the sea, drowning them. It happens over and over and sometimes the hook dips even deeper, drowning the crane operator as well.

****

During the day the dark slice is so tempting and it's all I can do to fight it; a thin curtain that so easily parts, beckoning me to a place I know too well. I’ll cut everyone off, that’s how I’ll show them. I’ll stop answering phones, won’t return emails or calls. I’ll say I’m busy and that will stop them because they’re busy too. This is how I’ll get away.

Tonight, after I’d read the story about the three orphans to the little one, after I’d gotten the hot water bottle for her and let her read herself to sleep in my bed, just as I was leaving the room, she said, mom, I don’t know what I’d do without you, and I said, because I had to, because you have to say this, I said, don’t worry; you’ll always have me. And then I turned out the lights and prepared for the sea.

Blowing Smoke

Was sitting there feeling small, not big. Not important. Not seen. Was thinking it would take something major, like a new book. An important book. Something everyone would be talking about. An achievement. Some supersonic effort that would catapult me out of the ordinary, out of this moment on the porch at mid day with my smoke and my coat on, sitting there blowing smoke into the garden.

Had it been enough to wake up every two hours the night before with a seven -year-old who was crying and twitching because she had a urine infection that stabbed at her throughout the night? Had it been enough to bring her into my bed and talk her through the pain, telling her to focus on her breath and the warm ball of her tummy, then waking with her a few hours later to go downstairs and wash her pee pee and put that thick white cream all over it and then make her a cup of hot milk so she could sleep?

Had it been enough to take a ten-year-old to school early and sit with her in the car while she plotted her birthday, now 8 months away, sitting, listening to her say that she wanted to take her friends to a hotel, not a motel, as well as swim in the Yuba river and go to the Rainforest Café in San Francisco. Was it enough just to nod and say maybe and listen anyway even though none of it sounded good to you?

Was it enough to get to the gym after that and pump those arms even though it’s not short-sleeve weather anymore and all your efforts will go unseen?

Or to spend the morning focusing on four students whose work needed editing, even though it took you more time than you thought you should give it because it wasn’t important enough, or supersonic enough and mostly because it wasn’t about you?

Was sitting there on the porch blowing smoke into the garden feeling small, not big, but having neither the energy or the desire to do anything about it.

Not What You Think It Is

It's not what you think it is
That's been my mantra for days now
It's not what you think it is
Which enables a more curious stance toward life
A stretching of the fabric
A way to sit back and see past the contours of the ordinary
It's not what you think it is
Your husband and the ballerina for instance
It's not what you think it is
“Well your husband does have a girlfriend,” a friend corrected
Yes, I replied, but it's not what I think it is
it's not what I think it is.

Come On Down

Our lives will not flash before our eyes.
It’s now or never baby.
It’s put whatever you can in your coffee; you got no cream; you go creamless.

Our lives will not flash, there are no second chances, no curtain calls.
You don’t get to go out smiling, a million friends around you waving, successful, perfect, concluded, finally weighing 125lbs.

Everything you said you wanted, there’s nothing there. I’m not saying don’t dream, I’m just saying don’t wait, don’t long for it, don’t hold out for it.

That balloon you’re clutching, that little string in your hands, the way you’re staring up at the sky looking for answers, look again. It’s just you down here.

The way you play that little game about three months to live and what you would do, everything you’ve kept out of reach for so long, waited for, how you’d eat fresh shrimp with limes everyday for lunch, or how you’d actually order an ice cream cone for yourself when you take your kids out, or eat more burritos, or have the courage to wear a short kilt with military boots like your friend Jane, or dye your hair festival red, or give yourself a couple of days off, or get on a plane to Italy with your husband because he’s never been there.

When you get honest, when you swing that door wide, the truth is maybe you should do those things and maybe you shouldn’t. Who cares? They’re not actually going to change you or help you or heal you. Whether you do those things or not doesn't matter.

That maybe it’s more about wanting and waiting that keeps you suspended, keeps us tolerating our perfectly average lives, the way things really are; how we look in the morning; the lines around our eyes, the grey coming in, how the house gets trashed and the messes pile up; the dishes, the clothes, the bills needing to be paid, another magazine saying no, the friend who doesn’t return a call.

And longing and wanting and all of those dreams you have are just a way to keep you reaching, looking away, high on helium,

And so I was thinking if I really did have three months to live maybe I wouldn’t go anywhere because there’s no where to go. How actually perfectly fine I am to live at the end of this dead end street in this ramshackle house with a family of mice below and a coven of possums above. And sure I could eat with more freedom and my kids would really get a thrill if I did order an ice cream cone in their presence, and I would like to wear that short kilt with the boots.

But who cares? Wanting and waiting is just a way to keep myself floating, but in my heart, really, I just want to come down.

Timing

Even though my i.pod died yesterday, and even though that was hella bummer just cause I am all about the music, baby, when I saw the motorcycle cop lying flat on his back on 880, lying there on the side of the road as I headed home from the Apple Store with my dead i.pod, heading home all pissed off because the brainiac at the Genius Bar wasn't helpful, treating me instead with a kind of weak disdain because I had nothing for him to fix, no lusty trouble for his Great Brain to fuck. “This i.pod is dead,” he said with a scowl, thrusting it back at me like some dirty piece of meat. I drove home peeved and pissed because a new one was going to cost me and the insurance on this one had only expired two weeks ago. Bad timing, bad timing I grimaced. And bad luck too. And then I saw the cop and I saw his motorcycle twisted and mangled against the guardrail and a couple of bashed up SUV's practically on top of it. And there was the cop lying there on the side of the road with his helmut still on and the small circle of civilians who'd been in those cars kneeling around his body, protecting him, comforting him, and I took a deep breath and I slowed down and I said to myself, timing, timing baby, timing.

The Way We See

You see better in the dark. When things sting, when they prick at you, when your husband is still on the phone to his girlfriend after an hour, when you see one of their emails and how bold and sexy she is, writing things like, “Do you still want me?” When you wake up from a bad dream where you’ve gone too far and kicked your husband out of the house, when you’re driving like a freak-head through the streets of your town looking for a smoke instead of getting to the Brownie Court of Awards ceremony, anytime you walk on the school yard and into the sea of mothers wearing holiday sweaters, the way you try to diminish your longings for your lover, the way you fight your feelings and then how you give way to his body like you did last Sunday, both of you fully dressed and in a mob of people at your house. It was only a hug but you released yourself and everything you have tried to hold back.

You like the dark; you understand everything better when you see its complexity, its trouble. It’s just the way you are. When the stone from your wedding ring fell out last week and was lost, after the momentary panic you smiled because it perfectly symbolized your marriage; loss and beauty; everything you hoped for and what happened instead and how only marriage can take you down that bright, shadowy path. And mostly whom you have needed to become to live into that.

After a day you stopped looking for the stone because the story about its loss was so much more compelling than the possibility of finding it.

But darkness takes its toll. Cement boots. Bad dreams. Agitation. A desire to smoke. Close down. Shut people out. Valerian and amino acids at night to stop your thoughts, and then waking up every morning at 4:30 to roll out your dark observations; does the lover love me? Not enough. No more emails or phone calls for him. Do I have the energy to teach today? God, I have nothing for my students and have they figured that out yet? Will I ever finish that book proposal? Do I love my husband enough? Am I screwing up the kids? Have I always been this unhappy?

It’s not that you don’t seek the light or appreciate sweetness, you do, it’s just that even when something has loveliness, like last night when you and your husband went to see your kids in the summer production of Beach Blanket Banana, even though you were moved by how beautiful and talented your daughters were, the way they’d memorized their lines and sung with such expression, what captivated you was the way your ten-year-old held hands with Rat Dog at the end of the show when she finds out he rides a Harley, and the way you watched her holding hands with this boy, the way you examined those clasped hands, like tea leaves, reading into the future. You see everything, you see too much. You always have.

Choosing a Dress

Why she has brought him along, asked him to come to the dress shop she does not know, can't remember, but suddenly the dressing room feels too crowded and the dresses keep coming and are piled on the chair, on the table, hanging on the hook and she can't change fast enough before the salesgirl, a brunette with sparkling green eyes, brings another that he has chosen and wants to see on her.

It hadn't been her idea to come. She'd been saying, whining really, that she had nothing to wear to the party that night. He'd been sitting there reading the paper, holding it up between them and at first she thought he hadn't heard her but then she realized he wasn't listening and so she said it again, pretending even to say it to herself. Nothing to wear, nothing to wear to the party. "Fine!" he'd shouted, and throwing down his paper had called to Mac, their driver, who appeared ever the ready. "We're leaving," he said, "we're going to find Virginia a god damn dress!"

She'd sat there with her cigarette and coffee, regretting, regretting the moment wishing she could take it back because it wasn't what she meant, the dress, not what she wanted, not the dress, but she couldn't say what, and in the next moment he grabbed her cigarette out of her hand, tossed it into her coffee and turned to her, “Get yourself ready, we're leaving.”

Now, in the dressing room, rushed and hot and obedient, the clothes were coming too fast, like a punishment and her own clothes, the ones she had worn in were lost in a pile, drowning in dresses, too many beautiful offerings, and there wasn't time to see them all. If only she'd kept her mouth shut about the party, she hadn't wanted to go but then there was no choice.

The salesgirl kept knocking, "Mrs. Jacobs?" She'd say, “your husband wants to see you in this one,” and she'd oblige, in her nakedness, breasts hanging, underwear, and bra loose, to open the door and receive his offering.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” he shouted from the show room and then there was laughter and she could see them out there, he and the salesgirl, him lording over the place, dictating with his cane, “over there” he'd say, “bring out the green one, I want to see that one.”

And how the girl brings everything he points to. “Virginia!” he calls too loudly and she shrivels. The clothes, they were too much, too fast, too many. She hardly has a chance to assess herself, to stop and face her own reflection in the mirror, to decide if she likes the color, the fit, hardly has a chance to feel the fabric on her skin before the sales girl is opening the door to the room singing, “Mrs. Jacobs, come out, come out wherever you are.” And there she is, the good doll, daddy's girl, exposed, revealed stepping out into the light, into the circle of eyes, his and the salesgirls and now the other customers who are assessing her, then looking back to him, then back to her, then to him, waiting for his answer. There is a silence and the salesgirl guides her to the mirror so she can see for the first time who she had become, what was possible. And maybe it is the light or the fresh air of the showroom but she thinks she looks pretty. And she likes particularly the way the pinks and the purples of the flowers ring around her neck and how pretty the bones of her collarbone are as they meet the edge of the fabric and a smile spreads over her face because now she is happy, at first taking the skirt of the dress in both hands and swinging it a little like a doe see doe and then like a ballerina, on her toes twirling a little like one of those princesses on the jewelry box, and she's ready now, to thank him, to have him see her and so she turns like a child excited, hoping her excitement will make him forgive her for the whining at the breakfast table…but he's gone, not there and she searches the room for him, a little breathless and sees him finally, behind the counter with the salesgirl, laughing at something. And as if in a dream she's become invisible and unsure and her hand reaches up to the pretty place by her collarbone as if to reassure that she's really there, and the reach becomes a rub and the rub becomes a tug and she's aware of the material cinching around her waist; she's unable to breath and she has to get the dress off, has to get it off now…can't wait another second and she reaches her hand back for the zipper…in the dress shop with the saleswoman and the laughter and the kaching of the cash register and the little bells as the new customers come in and are greeted and then a phone and she whimpers, “I can't get the zipper, it's stuck. The zipper” she whimpers, “can't get it loose,” and she feels the heat and the shame and then the anger because she is trapped in the dress and begins to cry and she can't say, can only cry, “zipper, zipper, zipper.”

Some of the Things You're Not Writing About

#1 The clear-eyed silence between you and your mother. The way she held you at the end of the trip and how painful it must be for her to lose this connection with you; to love you but not to know what's going on with you. How, for the whole two weeks you hardly spent any time together, and how even on that four-mile walk to Puako you managed to avoid the topic of how you really were and whether you and your husband were still involved with that couple. But then how, at the end of the trip, on that last day in the laundry room, how she turned toward you and said, “hug,” and the way you stood together, so still, holding each other. Not one of those hugs where something is trying to be conveyed, a hug like “I love you” or “thank you” or “everything's going to be alright.” This hug was stillness and silence, and then the smallest sound coming from your mother in the moment when you realize that she has felt you, located you, her first child. And that was enough, just to find each other in silence, in a laundry room in Hawaii.

#2 What's going on between you and your lover, his wife and your husband. Where things are and where they aren't; what you're feeling, what the plan is, when you had sex with him last. What's up with that? You know, the whole story; the juice, the details, the drama. You're not really writing about that.

#3 How tight your jaw is, one week later and how it's still kind of sore, a reminder of the weekend-the E and the whole day up in the hills; the heat, the trees, you, walking around bare -chested, sun tan oil all over your body, and your husband, naked in the grown-up sized sand box, with a rake, for hours. Your lover, his wife, your lover, his wife and those easy moments when you wanted nothing from any of them. How all the roles fell away and even your anger at her for making it look so easy; her raven beauty and ability to be both the girlfriend and the wife, for making it seem like you were the only freak in the show, the only one who lived and lurked, who ducked and covered in the shadows. All that fell away and there she was, sister, friend, confident, the woman you share husbands with.

You're not writing much about that because you've taken a break from the narrative, the story line. You're still a part of the drama, but it's like you've forgotten your lines and a part of your brain has gone soft. You've stopped wondering how the story ends; whether the hero gets the girl or if good will triumphs over evil. In fact, you've forgotten what the play is about, and, as if in a dream, you find yourself roaming among the cast, but you've all forgotten your parts and there's an easiness to this, a new level of possibility, an opportunity actually to switch roles if you like, to become, for instance, the aloof lover. You could play that role, try it on, as you did last Friday when you had the pleasure of hearing his voice on your answering machine and then your ability to leave it at that. I mean, he said to call back if you felt like it, and the truth was you didn't.

#4 That you and your husband haven't made eye contact or spoken more than two sentences for going on 40 hours, not that you're counting. And how you kind of like the break and the ability that the two of you have to step away from one another like this. And while it's true that there is an issue at hand, not just a funk, the phrase your husband used to describe it, no, not a funk, not a simple peeve, but a real life makem or breakem issue having to do with money, while it's true that there's this big ol' something sitting there not being talked about because you can't, because it's too triggering, because you need a third party with you, someone who can listen and keep things fair, honestly, your attitude right now is fuck it. You don't want to resolve things just yet because you like your anger and your self-righteousness. You like having the power and knowing that he needs you and that a part of him must be feeling like a really sad piece of dung right now. I mean come on, a 46-year-old father of two, the owner of two cars and holder of a mortgage is broke again and doesn't have a plan. No, you don't mind the distance, you like the distance. You need the distance. You're just fine with the distance.

These are just a few of the things that you're not writing about now.

Lucky Penny

Are all pennies lucky?

Even this one, the one I see when I look down at my feet at the gas station this morning, half in, half out of my car, waiting for the tank to fill?

Even this abandoned penny; dirty and scratched, run over dozens of times by cars whizzing in and whizzing out, impatient and empty, all of us on the move, grasping for a greater piece of the pie.

Is the accidentally dropped penny, the one that isn't worth bending over for, this worthless circle of copper, the very same penny that is meant to bring me luck on this cold, summer morning? What else in my life is good fortune disguised as loss?

In the dream I had a week ago in Hawaii I only remember the words as I awoke, “lucky penny, lucky penny.”

gone fishing

deep sea diving. Home on the 14th of the month.

The Crippled Mother

It is the night of your daughter's Brownie Court of Awards ceremony, a one-hour affair where the girls receive their hard-earned badges and the older ones ascend from brownie to Girl Scout status. You ask your daughter, a first-grader, if she wants you to be there. You haven't worked on any of the badges with her this spring and you're not even sure she's going to get any. She is enamored with the girls whose sashes are covered with colorful swashes of pink, green and blue, a testimony to where they've been and what they've done.

There is a book you can purchase at the girl scout store a few miles from your home that tells you what to do to earn the badges, but you didn't buy it and haven't been back to the store since last fall when you spent $80 outfitting your daughter in her new uniform; the brown tights, the official brownie pin, the brown skirt and t-shirt. You were excited for her that day. She really wanted to be a Brownie. You were a Brownie and a Girl Scout, and 34 years later you still have your forest green uniform, the green knee socks you wore, the belt, the yellow bow tie, and of course the crowning achievement, the sash, which is covered in row after row of badges that you earned and which your mother sewed on for you.

You and another mother, Jeanie, promise each other that you will share the badge book and get your girls together every month to work on sewing and jewelry projects so that your girls can fill up their sashes. But you never do. You forget all about it.

Now, tonight, months later, the thought of sitting through the awards when you're like this, when you're feeling like a freak, a maniac, when all you want, when what you really need is a cigarette, just the thought of being crammed into the trinity Lutheran church with the proud parents from Franklin elementary school, some of whom will bring flowers for their girls, just feels impossible.

When you asked your daughter earlier if she wanted you to come she said yes and that she has a surprise for you. Now, with forty-five minutes until the ceremony you find yourself careening down the streets of your town looking for a cigarette. You'd gone a week without one and you were feeling pretty good about yourself since you'd taken that nearly full pack and dumped it into the garden fire pit. You were even relieved when it rained the next day so you wouldn't have to get on your hands and knees and pick through ash and twig to collect the loose tobacco and re-roll it.

The week had gone pretty well. The sex with your lover this past Sunday at his house, after his children had gone to sleep and while his wife was across the bridge with your husband, the sex that started with sake and ended in his bed hadn't left you entirely demolished. You'd had some rough moments, the few days when he hadn't called and you began to feel desperately unloved again, but you had held yourself up, you'd put one foot in front of the other, you'd been to the gym, you'd focused on your students, been nice to your husband and you'd been writing. You were thinking that maybe you could do this after all. You could have sex with a man who didn't love you like you wanted to be loved. Maybe you were getting stronger, your skin was thickening. But something had pricked at you a few hours ago, you don't remember what, something had nicked a wound and reminded you that you were actually utterly devastated.

Your town, an island, is small, 12 miles long by 1 mile wide and in the first ten minutes you've already been to four liquor stores looking for your brand, Bali Shag light. Nobody carries it. They carry the other loose-leaf tobaccos, the Drums and the other, heavier versions of Bali Shag, but you want the light.

Freak. You feel like a freak as you drive down Central and when you see the Carter family in their station wagon, mom and dad up front, clearly on their way to the Brownie Court of Awards ceremony. You, my friend, are going to wrong way.

Five liquor stores, six liquor stores, you pull up to each one, rush in, scan the counter and ask the clerk if they carry your brand. The Pakistani, the Chinese and the white liquor store employees shake their heads, no. You end up going to nine liquor stores in thirty minutes and no one carries Bali Shag light. Each time you get back into your car and kick up the engine your panic rises. You remember a petition that you signed a couple of years ago outlawing a chain of cigarette stores from opening up and you remember how adamant you were, how you talked about it with your friends, that your town needed to support stores that the people really needed. That was a lifetime ago.

You consider buying something else but as desperate as you are, you've miraculously drawn a line for yourself; if you can't find the Bali shag light you won't smoke anything. You say a small prayer as you enter the stores, please, please, let them have it, but each time as you exit empty handed you experience the faintest triumph, that you were able to walk away without the pack, that you might go one more day without a cigarette.

Freak. Fifteen minutes until the ceremony and you know the other Brownie parents are feeding their children and getting into their cars for the church, but not you, you are driving like a maniac, faster now down the streets of your town looking for a little relief. You are oily, unhappy, dirty and tense. And you're driving in the wrong direction.

The smoke is going to ground you. You know this. You've come to rely on those measured breaths, the calculated inhalations and since you've been smoking for the last month and a half, mostly out in your garden when the kids are at school, you've re-connected with your chain-smoking dead grandmother Ginny and how much she must have needed this steady breathing to ground the out of control spinning that was her life. Like you, she needed to settle herself, needed to keep one foot in front of the other less she…less she...and then she…

But now you're the one driving like a maniac. You're the one who hasn't found her brand and who needs to get to the Brownie Court of Awards Ceremony, which starts in ten minutes. You're the one who needs to surrender to the panic, and the desperation, and your terrible unhappiness, your addiction, you're the one who needs to turn around now and get things right.

When you get to the church it's jammed with parents, and your husband too, who is sitting next to Polly Brown, wife of Max, the man who you sometimes fantasize about when you're having sex with your husband or with your lover, fantasizing that you're fucking or sucking at his house just minutes before Polly walks in the door. For as handsome and tall and Nordic as Max is, it's the hulking presence of angry Polly that gets you off every time.

Your husband turns around in his chair and he makes a coy, little wave to Catherine, another mother from school, a woman who you know he finds beautiful. You hate him in this moment. You hate everyone. But suddenly your hatred is broken by the sound of your baby daughter's clear, strong authoritative voice coming from the front of the room. You can't see her because you're in the back and many of the parents are standing, but it's her, you know your own baby's voice.

“Attention,” she says loudly. “Color guards advance.” At which point scouts holding the American flag make their way to the front of the room which signals you to stand and to say the pledge of allegiance. You hate this too, but put your hand on your heart because you're so full of shame. Shame for needing cigarettes. Shame that you didn't help your daughter earn the badges, shame that you don't want to be here and shame mostly for being obsessed with a man who wants to fuck you but not love you. Ashamed that the only high you feel these days are the moments when you're having sex with him or getting a call from him.

But now here, in the church it is your baby's voice, strong and clear and commanding and you are immediately lifted by it. In this moment the small seven-year-old girl is the strong one. She is the one asking the people to stand and to pledge. And you do it, you do what she asks you to do.

You almost don't recognize her voice. She sounds older and so sure of herself. How did she know the words she was supposed to say? She hadn't practiced at home. She hadn't asked you for help. She'd done this on her own and you realize this was the surprise she wanted you to come for.

Your husband finally sees you and comes to the back of the room where you are leaning against a table. You wonder what people think of you two. You standing there in your beat up jacket with the skull and crossbones emblem and the words Death as Your Advisor written on the lapel, and Walt, the beloved artist in resident at the kid's school, the nicest, cutest dad on the playground, the one who hugs and flirts with the other mothers, who tells them they look pretty. Walt and you, whose eyes are dead and exhausted, the only mother in the room who doesn't have tears of pride, who doesn't know the words to the Girl Scout pledge, the only one who just stands there when the entire room breaks into a silly girl scout song that requires clapping their knees and wriggling their hips. Everyone is hooting and laughing now, singing and clapping, even the couple up front, the gay man and his wife, clearly a marriage of convenience, are wriggling their asses with happiness. And there's Jeanie, who has lost her marriage this year and has just found out that her husband Frank has gotten another woman pregnant. She's laughing and wriggling too. But you're not even pretending to wriggle. You don't have any wriggle in you.

The awards begin and you have to give the troupe leaders a hand because they're moving all 35 girls through the awards pretty fast. You're glad because you're supposed to meet your friend, Mary, a divorced mother from school, at a neighborhood bar for a drink in an hour. The last time you saw her she had been dumped by someone she really loved and she was like pulverized dog meat. Couldn't form a sentence without bursting into tears. She said she was better now and you need to find out why.

You see Zoe, blond and petite, sitting with her friends and smiling. You wonder if she feels connected to these girls. If they're her friends. You usually drop her by the curb in front of the church for the Tuesday night meeting and take off, back to your office to work or to drink or to pine for emails from your lover. You don't really know what she does here; all you know is that her absence buys you silence and time.

They're calling the girl's names now and to your surprise Zoe's name is called and she marches up to the front of the room to receive a little pin commemorating her first full year as a Brownie as well an envelope stuffed with badges. You have no idea what they're for or how she earned them, but you're grateful, so grateful that she hasn't been forgotten, that these women who run the troupe, older women whose own children are grown now, women who don't get paid to be leaders and who come here every week because they love the Brownies and who have been looking out for your daughter, helping her thread needles, and measure flour to make cakes and glue jewels on pieces of felt to make puppets. These are the women who have come to know your daughter, who know what she has done and where she has been.

Beaming, she takes her place among her friends. You try to catch her eye but she hasn't been looking for you. She might not even know you're here. You feel invisible, like a stranger. Finally, in the gaggle of girls she's sitting with, she looks up and she sees you. In the chaos and the noise of the room you lift yourself up over the heads of the other parents and you make the sign that you do at home where you touch your finger to your eye as in I…then to your heart…as in love…and then you point at her…you…I love you. She watches you steadily, and without blinking or smiling she makes the same sign back to you except at the end she sticks up two fingers. I love you too.