The Young Peace Officers Who Found Her (Tables Without Joins)

She is comfortable and at peace. Unlike the two peace officers who found her.  This-here-situation... it's freakin' wierd.    

The objects around where her body was don't fit any scene they know.  What could that have been for?  And these?

They want to know if we know. We do not yet know.

The Investigating Lieutenant
When I visit a year later, the Sheriff's Office Lieutenant reveals that investigating her death dug in to his personal life for months.
Tells me about his needing to understand why.
About how he's come to believe that suicide is not a sin.
To believe that God would feel about your suicide the same way your best friend would:
So sad not to have been able to do more.

I Know Who You Are (Tables Without Joins)

She has passed away, over, through, and on.  She floats to the arms of the all-loving God, who seems to have reciprocated by placing a collarless and unyeildingly tolerant terrier in mom's back yard.

She died, and lived for three years, in a West Texas town with 25 percent fewer residents than five years before. The time of mom's Celebration-of-Life service makes the radio station news.

Celebration of Life
We put out happy photos like these. Here Mom's about 30, setting up to fly a race.
At the service, women bring casseroles and cinnamon rolls.
"She was smart, she had ideas, she wanted what she wanted...we had no idea it was this bad for her.
"Did you know?" they ask.
I close and then open my eyes in a small nod.
A man with military upright shoulders meets the offering of my name cold.
"I know who you are." he says, with a glare so transitive I step out of its way.
Taking turns using thin arms to pin the dog to dangle from their bellies, the children lean and crouch to the grass, filling their pockets with pecans.
Where did this dog come from? This has to be someone's dog.

Winter Bit My Neck

Winter bit my neck. The mark looks like a hicky, but it's dry skin + scarves + coats + cedar allergies. Still. It looks like I spent all night, roughly two nights ago, being wounded in passion.  Notsomuch.  Makeup irritates it. A scarf is out of the question. I do believe the balm exaggerates the hue.

I considered marking it lightly with a note - Not A Hicky.  But delaying the explanation of "hicky" to my children is something I'm invested in trying for.

After self-consciousness there is mystery and soul.  Maybe it is a sign of some sort.

For instance, a sign I need detergent without additives.

Trance, Dance, and How Their Red Lips Shine in the Slant of the Night

(Reading this again, posting this again.)

I guess it is from reading Jennifer Michael Hecht's Myth of Happiness again that my morning drive Big Thinking Time wonders into considerations of "trance or dance;" specifically, I'm curious about the intersections-- of each of us and our other people -- as defining units of self.

When we choose to work as pairs or groups, we tend toward known roles. My curiosity is about moments of insight, when individuals become aware of participating in welcome choreography. And the lack thereof, when we move unconsciously, in a trance. Agile software development methodology is, at least conceptually, a dance. A group agreeing to a deadline that each member knows to be undoable - that is a trance.

Relationships, teams; they are drawn from the lines between. Like the spare coherence of molecular structure, our defining lines bundle us into systems and roles toward goals. In to pairs, triangles, groups tumbling into routines set in (e)motion as strings of genetic and cultural syntax.

Here is "trance or dance" - these bundled movements, are they conditioned reactions coded to reproduce what we are coded to reproduce? Or are we joined intentionally in motion that itself is the performance. How possibly to know the difference?

Their red lips shining in the slant of the night before the first day of school. This is the rose of the children, snuck to school after bedtime to see which teacher they got - lists were posted before the year begins - and which friends will join them in class. This is the shine of their healthy bonds bouncing unpracticed under the eave of the entrance to the school year.

This is the concluding sentence wrapping it all together.

Just-Barely-in-Time-Mom

This morning I was driving to school, late to be a part of a school event I had hoped to attend more casually than loping across the field to find my daughter, hug her, and tell her I love her; tell her I can't stay because I have to go back to work; tell her I'm dropping off the check for gift wrap probably we don't need, and for an absurd $18 bottle of cinammon-roll-scented bath gel definitely we don't need (but secretly I do want).  Dropping the check in the nick of time, like I make or miss many school deadlines, just-barely-in-time mom.

Loping across the field, glad not to have been discovered texting (stoplight!) in my car, texting the children's father to see if he's learned anything about our son's party logistics do's and don'ts, because I have to reschedule the party...because I'll be traveling that day.  Because the client dug my stuff, man.

And what was I thinking when I scheduled the birthday party for late Friday afternoon?  I mean, my job is flexible, but did I think ahead?  Will I learn to think ahead?  Will I ever master this?  Will my son forgive me for rescheduling his birthday party?  Will he even care?  Is it anything new legos wouldn't solve?  I remember leaving my house one night when my daughter was two, and she was screaming, and I was going to drink wine with friends.  And then she got to me, of course, and I knelt down, and she said:  "TEE TOES!"  Really the loss she was mourning was the bag of cheetos under my arm. 

Loping across the field, watching 100  six- and seven- year- olds trying to fling stuffed frogs in to hula hoops twenty feet away.  Toss tiny balls in to tiny containers.  Toss rings around posts.  Trying to understand the goals and the rules and make their little bodies and minds do it right.   There was some discomfort of heat.  Some were competitive, some were tired.  Some were wandering off.  Some were running in unminding throngs.

And I got it, got something anyway.  Are these kids trying just as hard to be everything kids as we are trying to be everything parents?  And when we do "give up," throw our arms up in the air, when we do honor ourselves being exactly the parent we are, with a sense that that's the parent we are meant to be - does that somehow open our children's worlds to embrace themselves with such authentic confidence?  Oh I hope so.

Two Errands: His Wheelchair, and the Alien Baby

"Mommy, what's that?" and her mother says:
"A two-headed alien baby - it's for when you need
something devilish to play with."


Wheelchair and Alien Baby

The world washes through me
choosing my son's wheelchair.
A grateful mother of healthy children
privileged to have strife like
realizing he doesn't like soccer, or
missing the advanced class by a hair.

His wheelchair - it's temporary, and it's welcome.
A relief, and a novelty
certain to graduate to nuisance.
His sister is jealous.

A visitor in our family
bringing with it a reminder
that now cannot be presumed to persist,
that interruption beats assumption.

After the chair business the errand is for a toy
He's asked for the alien baby
a rubber two-headed, two-torsoed baby action figure
(if he were a girl, the word would be "doll")

One head is normal, adorable.
The other: fangs and cuts and blood and evil-angled eyes.
The spine sticks out the back on the alien side.
I am concerned about being criticized for buying it.

In the checkout line an angelic two-year-old girl says:
"Mommy, what's that?" and her mother says:
"A two-headed alien baby - it's for when you need
something evil to play with."

This is a time for monsters, of course!
For the child finally courageous to ride his scooter
rewarded with a first cast that doesn't work to steady the leg.
A new cast that does, but it's big, and people bump it.
4 days so far of pain he can not yet believe will end.

Surrounded by encouragement
Subtle commendation for being tough
Reassurance that he'll be good as new soon
Gifts and love and family holding him
In all this well-wishing, still there is night.

The evil baby's feet stick out the top of the bag,
making the car a little weirder than before
and I feel calmer for owning this little demon,
bringing it home for the child
to snuggle with knowing
as he now may sense
of the not knowing of what's a-head,
of the soulish delight in a thing both darling and very dark
propped in the lap of a hurt and safe nine-year-old boy.

Introphoning: Urban Dictionary

In 2007 I submitted a word to the Urban Dictionary.  It's 2013...and I decided to check if it made it in. Back then I posted as "Momniac."