Just Between Us

 

   Wayne says that he’s the one who took care of Clyde.  He does not want to take care of another dog.  

 

    But Clyde and I know differently.  Clyde and I had an agreement.  Wayne needed someone to take care of and Clyde and I agreed he would be the one.  This was our secret. 

 

     That was partly why I loved Clyde so much, because he and I agreed that he would take care of Wayne by making Wayne take him for daily walks, and give him treats, even bake him special liver treats handmade by Wayne, and feed and water him, and teach him how to behave.  I’m the one who really taught Clyde how to behave, but that was our secret as well.  Wayne did not know any of this and he will not believe it now.  It was just between Clyde and I. 

     Right when we very first got him, I taught Clyde to stay off of the Persian rugs in the house.  I did this by using a spray bottle filled with water and squirting him whenever he went onto the rug.  Clyde thought this was a dirty trick and looked at me askance, sort of with a sideways glance, to tell me that not only was it a dirty trick, but that he knew it was a dirty trick.  He agreed to stay off the Persian rugs and the Himalayan rug too, but from then on he always put one paw on the edge of the rug just to let me know, just to remind me that the spray bottle was not nice; it was a dirty trick but he still forgave me.

     Clyde was a big dog but he did not feel like that should count against him.  He thought that even if he was a big dog, he should get to jump on people like any happy ass dog would so I had to teach him a special command, “Off!”  The way I taught Clyde that was I would turn my body away whenever he jumped on me and ignore him.  Clyde hated that.  Wayne would probably say he’s the one who taught Clyde this, but Clyde and I know it was me, even if Clyde is no longer here to verify it. 

    We had to teach Clyde that because, even at nine months old, when we first got him, he was huge and beautiful.  He had a shiny coat of black fur and a long red tongue that fell out of one side of his mouth because he lost a tooth when either a moose or a horse kicked him - back when he was an orphan before his original owners, whoever they were, abandoned him and left him to die by the side of the road.  Or maybe it was a ranch.  The story varied every time Clyde told it.

          But Clyde never forgot to remind me how we fell in love at first sight, he and I, when he almost knocked me over with that long happy tongue and his big happy grin just like I never forgot to remind him that I hated dog licks until I met him and it wasn’t the crazy wet tongue on my face, it was the quivering ecstatic shaking of joy filling his big 60 pound puppy body that got me, that made me feel it too, that joy deep in my cells, a joy Clyde brought with him, his purpose in life, to remind me.  Life, his joy said.  Live!

         Clyde knew, as I knew, that he had been a wild mustang in his previous life and that I had been a wild girl, a barefoot girl, who once rode him bareback through meadows where high golden grass grew tall and waved in the breeze like Clyde’s mustang mane did that lifetime, like his proud tail shaped in an S flew proudly behind him.  Clyde and I both knew this, though we spoke of it rarely, and in hushed tones.  We knew we were not supposed to remember such things in this lifetime, but sometimes we couldn’t resist and then we would just run and run down on the beach on Kachemak Bay behind the house in Alaska Wayne built us.

     Clyde and I shared secrets we never had to put a single word to, like the one about taking care of Wayne.  The day Clyde chose to leave; he was sick with a rare blood cancer that came suddenly and out of nowhere, at least for me, (Wayne had known, Clyde told me in our secret code, even though I hadn’t, that he was that sick, not just sick like in getting better sick like I thought) so it was terrible for me to suddenly have to face losing him in one day and he knew that but he knew too, and told me clearly and in strong language, how it had to be for Wayne – that he couldn’t linger, that he would if it was just me, because he loved me, but he reminded me of our deal about him taking care of Wayne, and, of course, how we both knew Wayne couldn’t handle that, Clyde lingering, Clyde suffering.  Clyde could, if I needed him to, he said, just to hang out together a little bit longer, but is that what we wanted to put Wayne through, he asked me?  No, he said so clearly.  I’m doing my job here, he said.  I know, I said back.  I know you are, Clyde and I love you for it and we both love Wayne, don’t we?  Yes, Clyde said.  We do. 

     And so, just between us, we said goodbye and part of our goodbye was thanking each other.  We thanked each other for loving each other, but mostly, we were just both so grateful to each other for how much we each loved Wayne – that we were a team – and how we shared that.

     Now I keep thinking maybe if we had another dog, I wouldn’t miss Clyde so much even though I know that I will always miss him that much.  But Clyde is still with me and he says be patient; he says that I am not just missing him, but I am missing how we shared our love for Wayne.  Clyde says we may or may not have another dog someday.  He says remember our pact that he will take care of Wayne?  Yes I say.  Well, Clyde says, I've never stopped.  Besides, you never know when a great spirit may enter your lives again.  It could happen.

     Clyde shows me this picture then (because Clyde mostly thinks in pictures) of him climbing into the truck with us the day we brought him home, how happy he was to find us, how perfectly we fit. 

     When and if another great spirit comes, Wayne will know, Clyde says.  Just like he did when you found me.  Remember?  Yes, I nod.

       I came as a dog this time, Clyde reminds me.  In another life, I was a mustang.  Who knows in what form we’ll meet again?

     I swear I can feel that big lug of a puppy lick my face again. 

     Keep an eye out, Clyde tells me. 

     I promise.

     He sends me another word picture.  He is headed down toward the beach, right at the beginning of Jeremy’s trail.  He pauses a second, looking back.  Our eyes meet, and then he disappears into the brush, leaving the fireweed and the devil’s club behind.  I get a last glimpse of his tail, shaped like an S, then he’s gone, headed, I know, straight for the water he loved, the ocean he once swam in, chasing some imaginary ball out on the horizon.

     Any minute, I know, he’ll come trotting back with it.  I just need to keep an eye out.

    

     

    

From This Broken Hill

     
     If It Be Thy Will by Leonard Cohen has been speaking to me lately and I recommend listening to the song (posted below.)

     I am writing memoir and Cohen's song pretty much describes my writing process.  A memoir involves taking the stuff of one's life, as though clay, and creating a third thing with it, hopefully art.  It involves telling the truth, a loaded subject in the world of publishing over the past decade (another blog post altogether.)  
 
    I agree with those who say truth is critical in memoir. However, it is emotional honesty I am striving for; no, not striving, rather, it is being demanded. It is not facts I am concerned with or some chronological rendering of the events of my life, it is some deeper truth.

      I now understand what writers over the ages have referred to as the muse.  My muse requires from me not only honesty, but a true voice, although I am writing from a broken hill, as Cohen sings.  I am writing to end the night...to let the rivers fill.  I am not in charge.  The muse is and for that, I am grateful.

     Each day, before writing, I light a candle.  I play this song.  I ask that mercy spill onto the page, that my burning heart be made well. I ask that the tattered rags of memory be clothed in light.  I ask to be let to sing.

     If it be Thy will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNfNdflTs5E&feature=player_embedded

To the Lighthouse

     You can see that I haven't blogged since September 2010. I won't try to cover that lost ground, just start where I am. I committed to an innovative writing project aka The Book Project at The Lighthouse https://lighthousewriters.org/ located in Denver, Colorado. We relocated here from Alaska in late August 2010.

      Let me clarify what I committed to:

      I committed to myself and my lifelong passion for writing and reading.

      I committed to a daily writing practice. I committed to emerging myself in a writing environment, one where I am in daily contact with other writers and readers.

      I committed to writing a book even if I don't know how, even if I don't know what, even if, in the end, the book I'm writing turns into something else or equals three different pieces of four different books, or one short story, or two essays or maybe a poem.

      I committed to listening to and following my Intuition; because She has taught me the hard way that all the other voices are liars.

      I committed to living the writing life because it is the Life to which I have always belonged even as I rejected it in favor of anything, anything, anything else.

      Last night, in workshop, I shared a selection from my memoir in progress where I describe the death of three friends by suicide related to alcoholism. This morning I get a Tweet about a piece in The Atlantic by Rob Delaney, an excerpt from his memoir ROB DELANEY: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage where he describes the death of three friends, essentially, by suicide.  http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/11/drugs-will-kill-your-friends/281418/

      His piece is, by far, more polished than mine but so what? I was tempted by the Liars in my head to completely dismiss my version, throw myself on the floor, and give up writing due to this discouraging coincidence, or is it synchronicity?

      But instead I decided to start blogging again here on the KellyBlog. I'm gonna keep Writing About What Matters as long as it matters to me.

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