Life Happens

It's funny how life blindsides us from time to time. I haven't blogged since June 2009 and so much has happened since then. My most recent post (before this one) features a poem I wrote March 26, 2009 after learning I was to be the grandmother of triplets. The same day I received the news, Redoubt, a volcano located in upper Cook Inlet, part of an area near where we live in Homer, Alaska, had just erupted with ash emission 65,000 feet above sea level. Along with writing the poem, I collected enough volcano ash from our rain gutters to fill a jam jar.
One of my daughters, Jennifer, had been undergoing a struggle with fertility issues for several years prior to a successful IVF implant that, against the odds, resulted in that good news. The sucessful implantation (after three failed attempts) was only the beginning of what became one hell of a miracle rollercoaster ride. The eruption of Redoubt paled in comparison.
In August 2009, I traveled to Brooklyn, New York, where Jen lives, to hang out with her for the remainder of her pregnancy. I had originally planned to fly to NY around mid-October, my intuitive guess for when the babies would choose to arrive. However, by August, Jen had been hospitalized twice with pre-term labor concerns. My son-in-law, Karim, was out of the country on business and it became clear: my daughter needed me and needed me yesterday.
So, the months of August, September, and October 2009 were spent in my daughter's third floor one bedroom apartment cheering her on in her heroic and determined effort to keep three babies in one place: inside her womb. She was magnificent.
As big as a house and growing bigger by the moment, she religiously drank two gallons of water (she had been told that, in most cases of pre-term labor, the expectant mothers are dehydrated), ate nutritious foods, and swallowed a handful of pre-natal vitamins daily.
The babies' optimal chances for good health and survival grew exponentially with every day they stayed in the womb up until 36 weeks. Then, the doctors informed us, should they reach that magic number inutero, they would need to come out via C-section. Eventually, the C-section was scheduled for October 19, 2010, timed at 36 weeks gestation, although we were told repeatedly that, with triplets, the chances of making it to a scheduled birth are not good.
She made it. On October 19, 2009 she gave birth to three healthy babies, two boys and a girl. Hannah (Baby B) and Rayan (Baby A) weighed 4.5 and 4.7 lbs each. Yasin (Baby C) weighed 5.2 lbs. Three days after birth the triplets and their mom came home from Columbia University Hospital to that one-bedroom, third floor Brooklyn apartment and three of everything.
Jen, Karim, myself, and my husband Wayne (who joined us a week ahead of their birth) hence took turns feeding, burping, and changing three beautiful babies in a constant rotation that was exhausting, even with four of us on duty.
Did I say exhausting? Yes. Have you ever experienced the kind of exhaustion that comes with what is, perhaps, your greatest work, your best achievement? That kind of exhausting.
Wayne and I flew home to Alaska just short of ten days after the babies' arrival. I had been in NY for almost three months and needed to go home, but saying goodby to my new grandbabies was bittersweet. I had so little time with them. Their life-affirming baby smell, the silky feel of their newborn skin, the distinct note of each of their cries, and the long, treacherous journey my daughter undertook to get them safely born had soaked into my pores and filled my senses with an uncommon, crazy love. They had safely arrived and with them, that miraculous thing we call life.
It knocked me for a loop. It's not the first time life has stopped me in my tracks. It won't be the last. So, if anyone happened to notice that I haven't blogged a word since a year ago June, just know this: Life happens. Aren't we lucky?

Yes!

Yes!

(written March 26, 2009)
Dedicated to Karim & Jennifer


One day

I wake up to the not so far off rumble

Of Mount Redoubt, esteemed Volcano Mother of

The Land of Ten Thousand Volcanoes, down the street and

The land line ringing off the hook, three loud br-rings! before I reach

To say hello! Flipping on KBBI 890 Homer, PBS to hear a volcano ashfall

Advisory "...in effect from noon to four p.m."...then the voice on the other end

Again, "Mom, there's three! Triplets!" Hold fast there girl!

"I'm so scared." You can do this. Anchor yourself there girl-woman!

Before the noon day sun is hidden behind gray dust,

A miracle has dawned in the labyrinth of our old, deep love, that

Love that, when it chooses, comes right into the house,

Doesn't even take off its shoes. Whoosh! Pushs molten rocks up and off

Like they're marbles, shakes out the hair and flings open the windows.

Later, after the advisory is called off, all of my laughter comes.

I run down the bluff to the beach

Tell the sea, "Thank you ! Thank you! Thank you!

I tell the sky, "Thank you ! Thank you! Thank you!"

I kneel on the ground in ash, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"

And then I turn in the direction of Mount Redoubt, and this is where

All of my tears come. I shout "Yes! Yes! Yes!'

And the word carries me all the way up to high tide and

The waves lapping the shore, as if to agree with me, their sounds

Say yes, as does the wind, and Mount Redoubt, and the earth making this

Huge Great Birthday Cake, Creating the Universe. I thank you.

"Sentinels": A Painting Inspired my my two Muse Grandmothers In Honor of Women's History Month

Sentinels

Until all of us have made it, none of us has made it- Rosemary Brown-

One of my two grandmothers had these incredible huge sunflowers growing on the borders of her garden. She told stories, played guitar, and sang ballads. I sat rapt at her feet. She always had an apron on and was either gathering food from the hen house and garden, or preparing it for others in her kitchen.
I only saw my other grandmother once before she died, as we lived far from her in another state. I was five years old when she died unexpectedly and young.
During an especially difficult period in my life, I began to imagine peripheral glimpses of her in the grocery store, just around the corner of the next aisle, or passing by me on a road, or just in front of me, as I drove. The sightings comforted me.
Of course I knew that she was long dead, but I had subconsciously recorded bits and pieces about her from things overheard, stories told, comments made by my mother.
We make meaning of our lives through story. When I needed her most, my maternal grandmother’s story came to my conscious awareness and I drew solace and nurturing from it, even imagining her ghost. Like my paternal grandmother, she was a musician. She sang and played piano in nightclubs during the jazz age.
My grandmothers would never dream of calling themselves artists. They did the right thing, as mothers will do, put the needs of their children and families first, and they made music while they did it.
When invited to participate in Her-story Exhibit II, it was my grandmothers’ voices I heard. Their stories, and that of the women I come from, are the stories of women everywhere. They not only adjusted to the circumstances into which they were born and lived, they thrived in spite of them and it is their spirit to which I dedicate this art piece.
The sunflowers symbolize the women I come from, women who turn their faces to the sun, women who follow the light. Architects of my story, of the stories of all women, they stand tall, like sentinels.

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. Vincent Van Gogh

Hades Moon, Demeter's Daughter

Unable to die, (no sharp instruments lie by)
When the moon is full and I have fallen, weak, upon my knees,
Painted upon myself Grief, orange, red, black, instead,
Torn at my hair, and madly rubbed charcoal about my staring eyes,
Down my cheeks; I gather the Objects,
Sacred only to me, to beat the drum of my despair,
I draw ancient symbols on my face, my hands, my skin,
A forgotten language decipherable
Only to the guardians at some ancient gate, then
As the Gods allow, or the Moon, or Pluto himself ordain,
I take another step down,
down the stone and winding stair.

A sister priestess, Her purple cloak about her hidden keening face,
Beckons me come, Lifts up her slender hands and pours into my opened breast,
That deeply drinks, bottomless thirst, of a holy water that knows,
A holy water that reaches, flows, finds the wounded, wordless place,
Dances fire, baptizes the heavy knotted roots,
Holding up its diamond-true, still mirror .

The purpled dark reflection contains All Power,
Collapses stars into black holes,
Births worlds,
Splits atoms, the mother's heart in two,
Like a pomegranate cracked; its marbled veins full,
Thick grief revealed, congealed and
Tracing a sluggish path through the quicksand circle of loss,
The caverns of the heart exposed, labyrinths of sorrow.

A glimpse of gold flashes, the thin thread grasped, and
Death's hand opens. The high priestess,
Embodied robe of poetry, breathes
Water-fire-earth-air verse, softly blows the healing tinder,
Flames the broken mother-heart with Spirit until it burns
The solid matter.

Kelly O'Neal Thompson
copyright February 2009

Poem for Linda and Dickers Undergoing Cancer

The dark glass mirror of each other,
Joined like twin halves of a tangerine
Flowered Lotus blossom.
One heart beating,
Spirit.
Kelly O'Neal Thompson copyright 2009

Linda & Dickers: Undergoing Cancer

Linda, my sister, oldest of we five siblings, sent me a heartbreaking poem yesterday. Dickers, her husband, and my brother-in-law, father to Laurie, stepfather to Julie and David, grandfather to four children, was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. At the same time, an aneurysm about to burst in his stomach was discovered and he underwent surgery for that. He has been a good soldier through it all and he has an amazing spirit. I know that he stays strong for his family and he has taught me a great lesson about love.

Remember Me

It’s cancer and it’s advanced
I don’t think we heard that right
It’s cancer and it’s advanced
This can’t be right.

Why our brain is screaming
Why us, what did we do
We must be dreaming.

A voice whispers in our ear,
Remember me, I’m here
No…you aren’t here
All we feel is fear.

How could this happen?
What did we do?
Nothing, he says, but
Remember me, I’m here.

Taking one day at a time
Putting one foot in front of another
Our minds are leaden
Our feet are frozen.

A voice whispers in our ear,
Remember me, I’m here
No, you aren’t here
All we feel is fear.

What will tomorrow bring?
We don’t know he says, just love one another,
Remember, I am here.
Oh…as our hearts begin to listen to that still calm voice.

Each day passes, time moves on,
Isn’t this a beautiful day, he says.
Yes, she says…so glad we are here together
Joining our hands as we live each day to the fullest

Did you see the sunrise this morning?
It was beautiful
Did you hear the birds singing?
Causing our spirits to soar.

A voice whispers in our ear,
Remember me, I’m here
Hello, we hear your voice
And feel your presence near and are comforted.

I love you forever he says,
She says me more than you,
It feels good to be together
To share our lives each day

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring,
But, we take each day as a gift
We now hear that voice clearly whisper in our ear,
Remember me; I’m here to help you in your journey

We remember you, we remember you
We are glad you are here with us
As we make this journey together
Safe in you, safe in you.

Thank you for remembering me.

Written by: Linda Carlson
February 9, 2009

Barefoot Days

Condo at La Paz Tres Lirios de Cala oil canvas by Kelly

Arrived to whites, browns, maroons, and greens in Homer, Alaska and the crisp embrace of fresh snow, clear skies and sunshine on Friday, February 7th. We left the blue, oranges, and reds of La Paz and the soothing warmth of blazing skies via Cabo San Lucas Wednesday, February 5th.

I began to choke on the closed air of airplanes by the time we reached the Anchorage leg of our journey and a stay in the downtown Sheraton overnight. Turns out it was so cold while we were gone that the hotels water pipes froze and burst. There was huge repair and renovation going on. With the stale, moldy air and a "ventilation" fan in our room that blew constantly, I could barely breathe by the time we departed for the airport and the last leg of our journey home, so the blast of cold as we climbed off the commuter plane and onto flat ground was welcome. El Sol pulled a fast one and burned so brightly in the Alaskan sky that I had to pull out my shades and put them on. It was 26 degrees.

A sweet reunion with Clyde the Fraud dog, who kept the Alaskan home fires burning for us, followed and today, my quick jaunt with him up the road and back served to refamiliarize me with my snug Ugg boots, long underwear, and the need for wearing, well, clothing and shoes.

I'm a bare foot girl from way back, so the freedom of bare feet and shorts in La Paz, with local residents asking me, "Aren't you cold?" (January and 65 degrees in La Paz is considered cold by local standards, but by Alaskan standards it was positively go-naked weather; besides, it was more frequently around 80 degrees the entire month, which, we were told, was unseasonably warm for that time of year. Either way, we are talking tropical and nothing feels better to me than terra cotta tile beneath my bare feet.)

So, while the sun is high and bright in the sky, remaining visible our first few days back in our part of Alaska, and while daylight increases exponentially as the earth continues its rotation (we gained, roughly, 5 minutes and 31 seconds of daylight today in Homer, Alaska), the need for warm clothing, shoes, and propane, wood, or other combustibles to generate heat remains paramount. Even indoors, I have to keep socks on my feet or they turn into cold bricks. Did I mention that I like to go barefoot?

In any case, though I've had to put on shoes and long pants, it feels much warmer than the 20 degrees F reported by the weather underground. On our walk though, Clyde calls me a "wuss" and reminds me that the average low in January was 6 degrees F at Cooper Wounded Bear Kennel, where he toughed it out while, his brown eyes accuse, we were on our "spa" vacation in La Paz, Mexico. The average low in Homer in January was 17 degrees F. The average low in La Paz, Mexico for January was 56 degrees F and the average high 76 degrees F.

We are getting a warm Alaskan welcome home, but I'm going to miss my barefoot days in La Paz.

Note: The above image is an oil I was inspired to paint for our hosts, Al and Michele during out stay in La Paz, Baja Sur, Mexico. (image: Tres Lirios de Cala by Kelly O'Neal Thompson, copyright January 2009 do not reproduce without express permission of the artist)