i almost bumped into a piliated woodpecker as i walked to the quilt garden. i've gotten pushed into this lowest loneliest place again. i'm trying not to let ken steal days from me. today and yesterday were to have been the days i honored mom. these are her birthdays. wrung out i walked to the garden thinking maybe a big vase of flowers in one of mom's vases would be the thing. that giant bird called to get attention and flitted from tree to tree in the front yard.

that is one big bird spirit. could it feel like the strong women touching me today? should i be paying attention to such a thing? mom would handle this. can i honor her by feeling strong instead of flattened?

i question this time if we can have any kind of marriage anymore. words mean nothing now. trust and integrity? values? to think we were on the surface talking about money and spending.

i will try to feel some company and spirits with me from somewhere. i can only think the help has to come from inside somewhere.

if you pick a peonie when it's closed...

just when i was as low as i could go today, peter called to ask if he picked a peonie and it was closed, would it bloom. ...and if he picked one partially opened would it open in water or not.

what a dear, dear, request of the mama.

it's 3 in the afternoon on a 95degree day in MN.

i needed someone to need their mother today.
........

and now she's tucked in upstairs. spring is to bring new life again. 'i don't think about it much', she says. "let's not talk about it" is what i know to hear now.

but there is no stopping the thinking. i already feel eased on one hand that we will come to know a sibling of addie's. i remember reading that siblings share 50% of their dna. we will hold a tiny baby again who will be *that* much like adelaide. it does feel like an embodiment of addie. how can it not? at least until this other childe becomes his or her own person and even then for me there will always be a shading, a color worn that is another.

as elizabeth mccracken wrote though, now we all know only that there will be another pregancy.

in all spheres, without a second thought, we take so much for granted.

perhaps without enough gratitude.

by grace?
by grace. near grace. within grace. of grace. beyond grace. aaaah, herbert, thank you.

i'm following my feet today to see who i am.

terracotta warriors

again not the right picture, but i only like to add an entry if there *is* a picture. the feel is right.

just off neal. steve made me do it. it's a habit that i've fallen away from and dodger, tove and i all are the worse for it.

i discovered the corn people this morning. the airport field still has them in lines. i'd forgotten about the company. they count so easily in summer. i need to remember their numbers and their sturdy stalkiness. they are small now, rugged and very rooted. they number in the thousands in tight neat rows. the beauty of mass and repeat and symmetry and then the singular beauty. tough and wild and pokey. of course i'm thinking of pam and her corn stalk books and art. and of course pam is some of my best company whenever she comes to mind. now i will think of steve also walking his NH woods and noticing and listening. if there are three of us walking the woods think how many others there are....

i was going to write about the too much of hawaii when one trains oneself so carefully to be knocked over by small and discreet.

"r" rat from now on christened "Really" , as in really hang in there, "real"ly, get real.

really, this time i'm writing here.

daily actually. i have assigned myself an Interim like the college kids get. and "for" interim, i'm taking a writing class. Ken, "really? where?". Right here, really. I'm planning to write every day, like a student does even if i don't want to. The direction as the moment is shaky. Yesterday I said absolutely nothing to myself or to anyone else. All complaining on a stupid big blank white word document. ick. [now THAT was like school. ick again].

i don't think "journaling" is what i want. journaling just may = complaining

i feel like conversation actually and find myself once again very, very lonely most days, but i don't imagine that i will have a confidant for now.

today, i'll post a Sylvia Plath poem that was a raw gift to me at lessons and carols of all things. it embodies i lesson i know but couldn't begin to express this way.

later..........