the ugly earring

poem: the window diane di prima
image found here

Springtime signals the return of the alligator lizard. The glow from our kitchen window at night has brought them intimately into our life as we’ve watched and studied them over the years catching their nightly fare of moth and flying bug. One of M’s first phrases was an excited chant of “Li Li” when she spied a lizard hanging out on the window glass.

When our Siamese cat, Igor, caught one several days ago the girls rushed to save it from an early death. It was my first day back at work. It was a day of adjustment for all of us – Ami and M waking up earlier than usual, L adjusting to the bottle, Love jumping into the role of circus ringleader, and me feeling a dose of self pity and melancholy for having to return to the real world.

It wasn’t easy.

The lizard helped lighten the load for the girls, especially Ami.

She spent the afternoon coddling and caring for the lizard even making a home for it in our backyard. Her sister followed closely, always by her side.

I can imagine how the hens responded – heads cocked and intently watching with their one-eyed stare. While I was at home, the girls spent a lot of time with the chickens, chasing them, holding them, and digging up worms. Several times, Ami spoke in her sleep, talking to her sister about the chickens.

Used to their constant attention, perhaps, the hens felt a tinge of jealousy. With her sidekick sister, Ami paraded around the backyard with that lizard hoisted atop her index finger.

That night, she put the lizard away in the home she made. It consisted of a terra cotta planter, a metal saucepan, and some old wood. We told her the lizard was already gone, and if not she should set it free.

In the morning, the lizard was still there.

Both girls took to the lizard like a new pet. It spent most of the morning perched again on Ami’s finger. At some point,  it even nibbled the tip of her finger – a kiss.

I wasn’t there when it happened but Ami said it went something like this: she set the lizard down in the grass right next to her and M. The hens were watching from the distance and in an instant the lizard darted for its escape. Ami chased after it but was intercepted by the second chicken in command, a hen named Henny Penny.

She saw her lizard dangling from Henny Penny’s beak. She stood there paralyzed and let out a horrific, tearful “Nooooo!” The sound of little girl cries filled the backyard. Little M scurried after the chicken – also traumatized and howling between tears. She chased Henny Penny around the rose bush.

It was too late.

Like a quarterback on the run, Henny Penny skirted past the girls and the other hens, hastefully eating the lizard in several quick bites.

I am still here. Mothering, tending, reminding myself to savor this brief moment, this fragile window of need. She requires the most and is near me at all times. Meanwhile, the girls continue to adjust. We are getting used to the chaos – the circus we bring on public outings. 3+ has an element of taboo. I pull from Love’s patience, Ami’s maternalness, little M’s humor, and her need for me. This is who i am during maternity leave, during a period when I stepped into 37.

My old shell heals and morphs back into shape. I squeeze into my old clothes and snap the waist button. They fit. It’s the mother’s milk…and the holding, bouncing, and swaying to music that comforts her. She cries a lot when she’s not in my arms.

We have hens now, free ranging in the backyard. They named my hen, a young plymouth rock, heño peño.

The rose bush bloomed.

It rained yesterday.

We’re nearing the next chapter.

I will return to work soon, and she’ll be placed in Love’s hands.

The girls will teach her the way of the she-tribe. He will teach her the ABCs.

When she calls for me, I will be far away. The milk will drop like tiny white tear drops.

The heart, the breasts, they remember this, all of this.

image: here

(pictures of her coming soon.)

from max wanger blog: jesse +whitney family

In a utopian world, I would propose, for the ultimate maintenance of the humanities and all other higher learning, an elementary-school curriculum that would make every ordinary child a proficient reader by the end of the fourth grade—not to pass a test, but rather to ensure progressive expansion of awareness. Other than mathematics, the curriculum of my ideal elementary school would be wholly occupied, all day, every day, with “reading” in its very fullest sense.

(text from: reading is elemental)
photo: from Main Historical Society

“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”

— Augustine of Hippo

photo: here from the Irwin Archive courtesy of the Douglas Historical Society, Douglas, Arizona. Early 1900s.

a sunday hike.

building sandstone houses.

playing near the remains of an old abandoned gold mine.

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”

—     Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte