My boys

 

School

 

Fell asleep in my arms

 

2016

 

What I said at Wesley's memorial four years ago

I want to tell you a couple of stories about Wesley. The first takes place maybe a year or so ago. I’d posted a picture of my son and I on Facebook. We were in the hospital. He was less than an hour old. Still had the clamp in his navel and everything. Tons of likes came in. Comments like aw, how sweet. Beautiful. Then came Wesley, written in all lower case: well, that’s kinda pukey. That was Wesley.

But Wesley is the reason I wrote my book. I told him about it before I told anyone else – including my husband – and he simply said, “Sweetheart, go for it.” Those four words have echoed throughout my brain for the last decade while I’ve struggled with this project, through the rejections and the acceptances, the failures and achievements. Sweetheart, go for it.

That was Wesley too.

I can still hear his voice, so how can he be dead? And yet he is, and we are gathered here in his memory.

He’s up there with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and he’s probably telling at least a few of us to go fuck ourselves.

I hope I’m one of them.

But here’s the thing: for all the pain he carried, the pain that eventually ended his existence, Wesley was here. You Are Here, the name of his book. And yes, he was.

Thank you, Wesley. Thank you.

Homecoming

I felt like a stranger. I didn't belong in this place surrounded by kid's books and warmth. I belonged out there, somewhere colder, riskier. 

I cried.

Maybe someday I can explain to Baz that I never could fully commit to family life. That's why I read Kramer vs. Kramer from time to time, wondering. But right now I have to try. Really try. I don't know how. I just do.

Meanwhile I listen to music while I write. All this genius, distilled into the purest of purity. How?

Write 100 words, reward myself with this

 

Just written

I once stayed in a cabin an hour or so north of Berkeley. One of those redwood things, in and of the woods. I was sitting on the couch when I heard it: a series of bangs and then nothing less than a deer poking its face against the glass front door. I felt so threatened by its innocence, so envious of its grace. Yet for a moment I felt seen, seen in a way I hadn’t been perhaps since birth, when my mother looked at me for the first time in wonder and terror. I wanted so much for Kelly to see me, really see me, to give me the gaze my mother had offered, what the deer had provided. An animal thing, really. Wordless if not soundless, a chance to be recognized. We both run toward and away from that.

Good morning from Occidental

Waking under cover of night. I didn't sleep well because I was so excited to be here. Write a hundred words. That's what Adam always tells me.

WordSpace residency, Occidental

 

The proud artist

 

Gracie's, Vallejo

 

Recent writing

Here goes: she slept with her stepbrother. She was 16 – and that’s what moved her to confess, my throwback to those halcyon days. He was 18. They hadn’t known each other long. Their parents had only married a year earlier. Her father, his mother. One night they took shrooms. Confessed everything there was to confess. Just barfed it all up. She’d been with only one other guy; he was a virgin. He feared he might be gay.

 

“Well,” she said, “let’s test that theory.”

 

Oh, it was awkward. Teenagers tend to be. But if she kissed him anything like she kissed me, I can imagine whatever insecurity he might have had went as limp as his dick was stiff. They were in her room. The place looked like the bowels of a cave; she had Goth aspirations. I pictured him, hands in her hair, pulling her close. They resisted each other in shifts. It’s just one of those things you’re not supposed to do.

 

“But it happens,” I said. “At least in porn movies it does.”

 

“Oh yeah.” She took another sip of her slushie. “That’s a whole damn genre. I can’t watch that crap. It’s just too – too –”

 

“Close to home?”

 

“Boring,” she said. “Just boring. How many variations can you see without it getting repetitive and stupid? You know?”

 

“You seem to have strong opinions on the matter.”

 

“It’s porn,” she said. “It means something.”

 

That further nailed it. I knew I liked this girl. Now I really knew. I felt my cells thrilling to the occasion, my dick shifting in my pants. Of course, that’s when my tongue decided to cleave to the roof of my mouth, shut down everything I wanted to say. The music switched from ironic to iconic: “Under Pressure,” the David Bowie and Queen version. Appropriate, yes. For certain.

 

Sip the slushie. Take a breath. That old breathing exercise my mother taught me: in for five, hold for seven, out for five. Get your head together, old boy. Get it together.

 

Seven years

On this day in 2013, a tragedy took the life of my friend Barbara Gladstone Weinstein. I knew her from birth and she treated me as a daughter. She worked for Philip Morris but never smoked, was a lifelong New Yorker and voracious traveler. 

I can still hear her voice.

So grateful

 

Mr. Lion, 1978

 

Ellen Bass, "Marriage without Sex"

I don't know how people stay married
without sex. How they can stand their mates
day in, day out, the irritations grating
like sand under the band of your bathing suit
when you're sunburned and greasy and one kid
doesn't want to leave and the other one's crabbing,
there's no more juice and too much to carry to the car.
How could they tolerate it
week after week -- the way he does the laundry,
mixing darks and lights, how he dangles
spaghetti from his mouth and chomps 
along the strands like a cow, or when she
repeats what she read in the paper, as though
she thought of it herself, doesn't answer
when he speaks, or gets lost
going someplace she's been twenty times before.
How can couples bear
each other without the glory
of their bodies rising up like whales, breaking
the surface in a glossy arc,
finding each other in the long smooth flanks,
hidden coves, the gift of sound rushing
from their throats like spray.
What could make them appreciate
each other enough to stay without
this ocean that smooths the crumpled beach,
leveling the ground again.

He was so little!

 

Adobe Books, 2017.

On death

I was just watching the Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic" video (genius) and thinking about MCA. Cancer, so early, so unnecessary. 

Would I be okay going this young? No. No, I would not. I want to be all fucking zen about it. But I'm not. 

Gil Fronsdal on meditation

 Perhaps having a provisional confidence ... is more consequential for our settling.

Today

I feel like a completely shitty mother. Total and complete.