A Lump in the Throat

Listening to Lucinda Williams' "West" and the song of the same name is playing. It soothes and rakes my soul at the same time. It reminds me of my love of someone and something. I love the West...not the West as Ed, my ex used to speak of as where he wanted to be once the girls and I moved to NYC, but The West that I know of as the Southwest, mi hermana. The desert. The sun. The heat that only comes from that. I think of how I marveled at my first heavy snowstorm in New York. I got an email from a former colleague who had lived in Mass., and now in Albany, NY. She basically was laughing with or at me, not sure, at my nouveau crush on the snow, a desert rat like me.

I let it go and playfully defended myself by telling her I'd lived in Michigan and Alaska as a child.

The snowfall in the Northeast still takes my breath away and dictates the steady pace of my air intake. When the snow comes, I want it to keep coming down until I am safe in my little apartment where the cats sleep all day.

Such is the same with my desert. "Come out West and see, the best that it can be," sings Lucinda, and I promise her I will as itunes rolls into Roseanne Cash and "Seven Year Ache."

This morning I awoke to Russell, our black and white cat, pestering me. He is such a pest! But that's why we love him: He's odd. So after telling him to get lost for the umpteenth time, I laid there and realized I had awakened to a state of grace. This is why being a pest like Russell pays off. I saw my hole in the net and just kept asking.

In the past three days since receiving grace, I have started a journal on this experience and it has been marvelous. Everything is marvelous. I am in the flow, my dharma, my place. People look at me at my work as if I am the greatest phenomenon or the biggest chipley (sic) (cry baby/spoiled). I'm not sure which and I don't care what they think. I also don't begrudge them anything. I am just glad to be the representative of what it looks like to climb over the wall of impossibility and despair. Sure my jeans are torn, but they only remind me of the struggle, the fight to get here.

Here.

I had a dream two nights ago, early in the morning after not being able to sleep for most of it. I couldn't stop thinking of my wellspring of hope suddenly producing more water than I ever imagined. So around 3:30 I finally dozed off and went deep. I dreamed of my mother. She had been playing with children, maybe her grandchildren, and trying to keep up. She was winded and happy, but the mother in me sensed she was not taking care of herself and looking down I saw her shoes had come off and I saw her feet, the one frozen from the botched operation, the other just free, naked without socks. I chided her and prepared to put her shoes on which suddenly turned to those beige ones podiatrists give for foot problems. Again I realized she did not have socks on and I said this to her when she interrupted me with, "Would you give me a big hug?" And in relaying this to you, I am crying once again, as I do everytime I try to discuss this dream.

I rose up and hugged my mother and I hugged her so hard and with such emotion, my brain burst with electricity and energy and suddenly I was awake and in my mind's eye I saw a gang of men in an old black 1940's convertible driving too fast around a bend on a mountain's edge. I let it all play out as I laid on the bed, filled with tenderness and angst for my mother. I told her of this dream the next day and she gasped saying that was good, and that was all she wanted.

I think my mother is preparing to drive into the unknown, the source, the land of energy from where we came. Last night I felt sad after reading an email from her stating such inbetween the lines. And I thought is one hug enough? Was it a bear hug of good-bye?

When I left for NYC 10 years ago, I leaned down to kiss my mother and I felt the softness of her face, which is what I remember and wish for when I think of the one who has been my arch enemy on more than one occasion and who has now become my avenger. Is this a sweet new beginning or resolve at the end of the day?

The desert will be cooler without her. And what I love about it will not be as strong for the girl born in Colorado and raised in Utah will not be there. And that changes everything.