Not Your Usual Friday Post

What a storm came up yesterday, late afternoon. There had been wind all day and clouds scuttering by and reports of tornadoes and rumors of tornadoes and then suddenly, around six, the rain began to patter and then soon, there were great running gullies of it, pouring off the tin roof of the porch, snaking its way in a new-made river in the driveway, pouring into the yard.

Mr. Moon had stayed in town to play poker as he does on Thursday nights and I was here with the dogs and it is testament to Pearl's increasing age that she did not even wake up as the sky clashed with lightening and deep thunder rumbled the house and the rain poured down. Even two months ago, she would have been trembling with fear, trying to get herself up into my lap but not even the smell of the rain reached her old brain as she slept through it all.

The electricity came and went as I tried to type out a post and then the internet failed and was down for hours. So what? So what? Juancho had written a post yesterday about how he wished there could be some short, at least, cessation of the internet and I cursed him as I paced the house, my nerves on twitchy-fire as the sky reflected me back to myself. I had been tired into the smallest molecule of my being after everyone left yesterday and feeling a bit crazy already. My brother who lives in Washington state has found my blog and is reading back posts where I wrote of our childhood, our growing up, and he had called me when Owen and Billy and Waylon were here here and I didn't have time to talk and I think he was put-off by that. His children are grown and he has no grandchildren and he doesn't remember what it's like to discover it is one thirty in the afternoon and there hasn't been lunch yet and you have a poopy baby on your hip, needing changing. He had asked me in an e-mail if he could give some input on those stories of our childhood. "Humbly," he had said. Could he "humbly" give some input? And I had no idea what he meant but the story of our childhood from his perspective needs to go on a blog of his own.
Just thinking about our childhood and my mother (who also called me yesterday) makes me feel crazy and I can't understand how my brother is reacting as if he has never heard these stories before when we have talked about them endlessly and he always says, "Oh, Mary. That never happened," as if I had a mind so twisted and evil that it would create a reality so vile.
Listen- no two children ever grow up in the same household and barely have the same parents. That is just how it is.
And even in our short conversation, me with Owen on my hip, he reminded me that HE calls our mother weekly and they talk for hours and it is good which is his way of reprimanding me for not doing the same. That if I just tried, I could have the same sort of relationship with her that he does. That she is really an amazing woman.

And it works. He always makes me feel guilty. He always makes me second-guess myself and the walls I have built around myself for protection.

But then I think of the way his mind switches things off and forgets them (even our recent conversations) and that makes me wonder what happened to him as a child.

Some of us are cursed with too-sharp memories and some of us are cursed with not-remembering.

So all of this was on my mind as the rain lashed, as the sky flashed.
I took pictures.
Click, click, click, this image, that one. THIS is where I am now. THIS is my home now. Here is my yard where the wind is tossing the hanging ferns.

This is the cardinal who eats at the feeder, even as the rain pours down.

Electricity on, then off, I still paced and yes, I cursed, too. I love storms but this one too closely reflected my heart and I wanted my husband, I wanted...
I do not even know.

I took pictures of the images that I know I have placed solidly around me to remind me that I am now safe, images which reflect the reality of the family I have, images that are totems of protection, too.

The sweet face of the mother, carved in some sort of light wood that sits on the altar in my hallway, the center of the altar where I place flowers, always, her nose funny from a spill she took on it once.

Her eyelashes impossibly long and dark and drawn as if by a child, framing the compassion the artist created there, along with that full lower lip.

The picture painted by my son when he was in grade school of our family and I know the picture is over twenty-one years old because Jessie had yet to make her appearance and Hank put himself squarely between his mother and his Daddy Glen.


I was not in a panic, not trembling like Pearl used to do during storms. Just...pacing. Just...twitchy. Just...trying to center myself back here, right here, now, now, now. This time. Not that. Take this picture. Take that. Remind myself of the goodness of this life NOW, this incarnation of it all.

I went out to back porch again and took a picture of the mermaid who hangs there, the mermaid which Owen has just discovered and which seems to fascinate him as it swings, flying, around and around in the lightest breeze. Her face is pleasant too, her breasts (oh- breasts, holy, life-giving breasts) bared.

She is not just a sea-creature, this mermaid. She has wings to fly, too.

I took the picture. I set the camera down. I ate my supper. I went to bed. Mr. Moon came home, soon enough and the rain had ended and the storm had passed on to wash another part of the world clean of pollen, to charge and discharge the atoms of the air.

This morning the sky is as clear as Owen's eyes. The wisteria blossoms which were ready to drop have done so, littering the walkway beneath them as if in readiness for a bride to tread on them on her way to the altar to stand by her beloved.


The birds chitter and chirp and call and it's cool and beautiful and the storm has passed.
The storm outside, anyway.
The one inside me still rages and I wonder why after all this time, that can still be. There is a lump in my throat, a bump in my heartbeat and even though my eyes tell me that all is clear, all is well, I cannot seem to put myself back squarely in this clean, cool day but am drifting somewhere else. Even these words I type do not set me down on solid ground.
How, after all these years, does this happen?

Well. We do not expect that every spring storm will be the last. No matter how clear the day or the week, there will be another. And then there will be summer storms and then fall and then the ones of winter, too. They come and they go, some leaving nothing but more green growth and some fragrant purple confetti, some leaving destruction behind.

We go out and we gather the debris of fallen branches. We note the way the flowers are bruised and battered. We see more clearly in the clean air. We clean up, we go on.

So it is within. The storm always ends. And there is tranquility and clarity.

Until the next storm. Until the next time the air becomes charged with voice, with words, with who-knows-what mysterious disturbance and chemical change until the light patter begins again, the distant rumble reminds us, and we must take shelter, take comfort where we find it and we remind ourselves, again and again, that we are safe. We are safe now.

I wish I didn't have to remind myself so often.
I am beyond grateful though, that I am.