Lisa the Great

 When I was three years old, I remember standing at the side of my house thinking, “I am only three years old, yet look how smart I am.” This is a real remembrance. While my older brother was suffering from chronic asthma, with my parents paying way more attention to him than me, I, for a moment, understood how smart, how awesome I was. Most of the time, my parents spent their time and attention on my older brother. I was the healthy afterthought. Now, As a mother of five very different children, I have a modicum of sympathy for my parents in this time, especially for my mother. All mothers spend the majority of their time worrying about their weakest child. Often, what attention remains for the healthy second is lacking.

When I grew up, I left home, searching for the familiar, yet new. 

I could not find my own trueness, so I settled for a facsimile of what I understood. 

I felt my way in this new world, looking for what I recognized as true. 

Eventually, after a number of years, I found it in my children. In the five I gave birth to, I rose. I rose to meet and greet them from before they were born. If there were ever moments I knew myself, it was these. I was a mother. I am a mother. 

Yet, after they grew up, I was left with a gaping chasm. Who am I now? Who was I ever?

How can there be more than one true room inside a single person? There has to be. There is. I am still struggling with this room, with how I live within it, with how I reconcile this room with the past, with children, with the future. 

I am closer to the end than to the beginning, yet, when fitful sleep comes, I still dream as if I was a confused child, seeing my lost baby brother, or an obedient mother, mortaring all the gaps between my children’s loose bricks. A frightened aging adult, wandering a maze of rooms that promise salvation, but lead nowhere. The children, the parents, the lost brother return over and over, screaming of my inadequacy. In these dark nights, I believe this voice. When I wake, I summon enough courage to get dressed, walk the dogs, move on.

Is this a way to live one’s last chapter? Sometimes I pretend to be confident in my opinions, but it often comes off more like belligerence. Where is the balance? How do I find myself, the one who, at age three, I understood to be awesome, but who gradually slipped away? 

The awesome three-year-old is still awesome. She has inserted herself into the world for the good, and she has offered up five wonderful humans in the process. She has faltered and failed. She has persevered and proven herself. She is smart, strong, mighty. There is music and magic in her walk, her work, her will. I know this in my soul. Yet I find it hard to believe it in my daytime self. The midnight voice admonishes, and sits, like a lurking shadow during the day, waiting for night’s sleepless paranoia to clock in. 

I search for the confident three-year-old. She is still there, I hear her voice, and see her standing at the side of the house. Now I need her at the side of my bed. I am only 68 years old, yet look how smart I am!

Remember the Titans

It was raining that first day in September. Nervous, damp-haired kids filtered through the halls, looking for familiar, or at least friendly faces among the throng, losing their bearings on the way to classes, and figuring out that rumors of a fourth floor pool were sadly untrue.

As days turned into years, these same kids found their friends, their mentors, their music. Teachers became confidantes and companions along their journey. The seasons changed, bringing fall football, winter basketball, spring track, summer beach expeditions. Proms, musicals, masses in the early mornings. Ski trips, class shows, religious retreats. Rings and yearbooks.

But it was not just the classes or the teams or the clubs or even the shows that made the magic happen. It was the music, always the music, drifting through the halls, echoing in their ears, pulling them so far into each other's souls that, finally, they could not pinpoint where one ended and the other began. 

It was the music.

It was raining that last day in June. Excited, damp-haired young women and men filtered out onto the field, looking for familiar faces amid the throng of proud parents and family members filling the bleachers. They were off, like feathers in the wind, off to make their marks on the world, finding new companions along the way, creating a new generation of nervous, excited young women and men who would then go off to find their own music, often returning home with their own babes in tow. An unbroken circle that would turn these weathered friends white and weary.

It was raining that weekend in October, fifty years later. Gray-haired women and men filtered into the school chapel, recognizing old friends -- often by name tags rather than faces. But no matter. Time fell away as friends reconnected. Then the music started. It echoed in their ears and spoke to their tired souls. They sang the old songs by heart, not needing to read the words on the pages. Some smiled, some cried, some did a little of both. The music held them . . . then released them, and, for a moment, they became young again.

The rain finally stopped. The friends slowly filtered out into the night, back to home and family, children, and grandchildren. One last hug, one last memory shared. Such an important piece of each of them had been tied up in the other that they knew they would never ever entirely separate. The day was done, and indeed, all was well.

Oliver

 There is a feral cat who lives beyond my fence. I have seen him flitting around for years. Now, I am reaching out to him, with food, shelter, and petting.

His name is Oliver. My daughter suggested the name after Olivia Newton John died. He does not answer to his name. I usually just "meow" and he shows up, meowing in response. 

This is my third cat. I rescued an older male who was on death's door in New York's winter a number of years ago. My son named him Strider, after the hero from Lord of the Rings. Strider was in his final days, and, despite my attempts at keeping him on my lap, he chose to go it alone, in the depths of my closet.

Then, we adopted a sweet tuxedo named Gemini. Gemini was a meowing baby, found by our dog Sammy. Sammy's unusual howling made us go outside at night to see what was wrong. A small kitten, without mother or siblings, she became our indoor/outdoor cat who responded to evening calls to come home. Sometimes, I would look out of my second-floor bedroom window to see her neon eyes. She was very good at staying in the neighborhood, not venturing into traffic. Gemini sat, purring on my daughters' chests, feeling as at home in our house, as around our neighborhood. We took her to our next home, where she became an indoor cat in her later years. She was affectionate, and still sat on my kids' chests when they were willing to be still.

Gemini developed mouth cancer and could no longer eat, nor clean herself. She lost weight and retreated to the closet. My daughter, the one who loved her the most, came with me to the vet's office. We held her as she passed into cat heaven, hoping she might wait for us at the end of the bridge.

I pride myself to be a dog person. But these feline companions have meant so much -- to me and to my kids. My Oliver greets me every day with an echoed meow, leading me to the makeshift house I have made, waiting for his breakfast and dinner, and excellent ear scratching. Oliver is mine, as much as I am his.

Whose Garden Is This?

Up north, I used to know all the names of the trees, plants and creatures. 

No longer.

Tiny delicate lizards flit throughout my garden and house, stopping to nod a throaty hello before moving on. Black Racer snakes sit still until seeing me, and then flit away to who knows where. Freshwater turtles greet me at the canal running in back of my house every evening, knowing I am coming with delicious food pellets. The fish and ducks like them too.

And, speaking of ducks, my extended family of Muscovy ducks wait for me to come out of the gate with cracked corn in the mornings, and waddle toward my car whenever I pull into the driveway. It is nesting season, and a few mamas congregate with their peeping broods, along with the other ducks -- even the fat, red-faced, hissing males.

I plant small things I cannot name, and they grow quickly into giants. Bird of Paradise, Banana, Oleander, Bougainvillia, and Cordyline. I plant others that become pineapples, avocados and mangoes. My Hibiscus has taken over the western fence. It is wonderfully out of control.

I thought this was my new Wild West (Wild South?). Yet the large orange and green Iguanas planting themselves squarely in sunny spots, blinking and nodding at me, say, "This is, and has always been my garden, not yours."

Atlantic, North and South

 The water is often still here.

The same ocean, yet she has changed her clothes several times

Since I last saw her.

She was sassier then, chilly and wild with waves worn

Around her shoulders like cotton batting.

Here, she seems deceptively softer, smoother, warmer to the touch.

But do not anger the ocean goddess of the south. 

She will roil and spill onto your safety -- 

A howling spurned mistress

Churning until all her rage is spent.

Her northern self is steely and controlled -- 

Her voice still so familiar in my ear that she almost tricks me into believing,

"Oh, it's you! You followed me here to keep me company, 

still singing the sea song from my earliest remembering."

In the north, she pulls no punches, tells no lies

Offers solace to the island dwellers.

Here, in the south, she is Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde

Lulling me into a haze, until the moon is full and the offshore winds whip her

Into a frenzy.

Once, I thought I knew her allure.

Now, I am not so sure.

Lisa the Tower of Pisa

 I recently learned my childhood crush, the youngest of three rambunctious boys, passed away. Since his rascally ten-year- old face is the only one I can conjur, it is
extra hard to believe he is gone.

He lived across the street. His father, a very loud man who knew nothing of

pig-tailed little girls, had composed a song in my very young honor:

Oh, Lisa, the Tower of Pisa!

She bends and she bends, but she never falls down!

It was shouted at me over the years, until this father retired and moved away.

The song always made me feel a little uncomfortable. Maybe it was the shouting.

Maybe I sensed subtle innuendo. But it also made me proud to know I was the

subject of someone’s original ballad.

The song has different meaning now, some 60 years later. It is a song of resiliency,

of survival, of flexibility in the face of gravity and a lifetime of leaning, bending,

straightening, bending again.

I’ve not fallen once. Nor do I plan to anytime soon.

Once Black, Never Back

 I can no longer do what I once did. My energy and strength have waned. Yet, at 65, I can still dig into the earth, still kneel to plant, still carry 40 pound bags of dog food and mulch. I can push the behemoth vacuum cleaner through at least three rooms at a time, before stopping to catch my breath. I can wrangle two energetic dogs on leash, without letting go. I can walk a few miles without fainting.

Once, maybe 15 years ago, when I was going to the gym on a regular basis, my friend (who was a personal trainer there) confided in me. He said, "I asked a client what her optimal goal was coming to the gym. She immediately pointed to you, and said, "I want to look like her."

I no longer look anything like this person's goal, yet still, I am happy with the body I have. I can walk unruly dogs. I can run if I have to. I can lift 40 pounds of dog food. And while my biceps have become the saggy bottoms of my upper arms, I still consider myself the Black belt, badass mama I once was. 

We are, not only what we see today, but a compilation of all we have been and
done. Like the black-belt martial arts community says, "once Black, never back."