Clouds and water

I stood atop a high stone wall today, little stars-in-my-sky, looking out over the water and thinking of you. Rain pattered all around, plashing up from the courtyard, patting on my hood, and leaving tiny, icy kisses on my cheeks. There was magic in the air, and in my mind you shared it with me.

Wide water stretches away below our feet, brushed and prickled with the falling rain, the island’s beaches curving away to each side. Curtains of rain drape from the clouds nearby, glowing slightly with the sun that’s almost breaking through. Across the water, the dark trees glow softly in sunlight, misty and insubstantial in the rain, and above it all floats a perfect castle of clouds. White and gray and towering against a blue sky, full of promises of adventure, it shines out, reflecting on the gentle hammered-silver of the water. “Come,” it says, slowly sculpting into new, fantastic shapes. “Come and ride the wind with me.” White cloud bellies edged with gold push out and up, making sail for far-off Japan, ready to journey through sunset and sunrise and sunset again. What would we see? we wonder.

The water is calm, reflecting sky and clouds and sun in shades of silver, pewter, iron, slate, gold, and robin’s-egg blue. Bright ribbons of current braid the surface, glowing veins of light now reflecting the cloud castle and bright sky, now the westering sun, now the gray rain clouds. And over everything, a breathless expectation. For somewhere before us, beneath the water, beneath the shushing rain that glows in the sun, beneath the castle of clouds, there are whales.

We stand close together, sharing our warmth, laughing at the raindrops when they splatter on your nose, watching, watching, for the magic of the whales. As the tide slips gently out, we watch it reveal scooped-out places where the whales have fed on the bottom, round as coins, shallow enough for Sabrina-Bee to splash in. So very, very close. One fat seagull waddles importantly up the beach, his silly orange feet in odd contrast to his formal gray-and-white feather tuxedo. Beyond him paces a blue heron, pompously striding through the water, pausing to tip his head to look into the ripples at his feet. Fast as lightning, he spears a tiny fish and flips it into his beak, and your eyes get wide. Ducks in exotic patterns of black and white quarrel with the seagulls over the emerging whale ponds. And just over our heads, one enthusiastic songbird pours a bright melody like a golden thread.

“Are they really out there, grandma?” you ask. “Oh yes, love. Right before us, under the silver rain. Gray as twilight and silent as clouds and big as imagination. Father whales, and young whales making their first journey back to California where they were born. And mother whales, heavy with new babies, journeying together to the warm waters where whale life begins. Can you feel the magic? Where the rain touches the water, can you feel the whale dreams rise up? Can you feel the silky cold water, taste the rich mud of the bottom, hear the far-off surf?”

“Yes,” you say. “Yes, it’s like flying! But it’s nearly night. Where will we sleep?”

“Right here,” I say. “You’ll float close to your mother and listen to her great heart beat, rocked on the rising and falling of the waves and tides. You’ll be comforted by the rough barnacles on her side and the sound of her breathing. You’ll dream dreams of sunlight on the waves, and deep green waters, and crabs and fishes and seagulls. For a day or a week you’ll play right here, raising a whale-baby rumpus and peeping above the water to delight the children on the shore, before moving on to new adventures.”

Evening clouds by hatestock

And so in the rain we stand, little stars-in-my-sky, four hearts together, waiting for magic. And if we never see the whales, we have magic enough. We have a rain-kissed evening, silver water, and a castle of clouds, with mystery swimming silently in the deep.

It’s enough to be here, and know they’re here too.

Fairy skirts-to-be

Uncle David has a Rose of Sharon tree in his garden with the most beautiful flowers, little stars-in-my-sky, and I can’t help but think of you when I see it in bloom. It’s heavy with frost now, blossoms long gone, but I remember the crinkly petals, blue and pink, sweeping like ruffled skirts, and think of the fun we could have with them. We’d pick a handful and carefully separate the petals. We’d gather them together, and I’d show you how to use a twist of grass to bind and hold them where we wanted. Maddy and I would make fairies, binding the flaring petals around a single bud, the stem forming a little hat, pink and blue petals mixing to form twirly skirts. Maddy loves swirly, girly skirts, and we’d dance our fairies around. Max would just say “humph!!” He doesn’t think much of fairies. His dinosaur toy would stomp and roar and chase them back up the tree.

“I’ll eat you up!” he’d say.

Pink skirts

The dinosaur is too fat for a skirt, and far too ill-tempered anyway. But then we’d hold it down and make a ruffle around its head, and suddenly the chubby dinosaur is a sleek dilophosaur, flaring its blue ruff and scaring the fairies. They calm it down with dandelion wishes, and coax it into the tree, where they all climb and dance together (dilophosaurs are amazing climbers) until it’s time for cookies and moo-staches. Carefully, Maddy and I press one of our fairies in a book, so we can preserve it for always, to enjoy when the Rose of Sharon is covered in ice, and little girls and grandmas have grown up too much for fairy skirts.

River of stars

As the holidays approach, the ache in my heart increases. Last year the holidays were marked by a thundering silence from my son and his family. At the last minute I got to see the children and meet my new granddaughter for a single hour, on Christmas Eve, in a mall at closing time. The children were already restless from shopping and having their portraits taken with Santa, so it was impossible to really interact with them much. I never did learn whether the children were actually given the gifts I sent, whether they liked them, whether they fit. I’ve seen no pictures. I haven’t seen Christmas pictures in years. It’s always “someday.”

The months pass like a river in flood, rushing onward, carrying my babies into a future where I’m nothing more than a shadow at the edge of their lives. Holidays are carried by like so much flotsam on the surface, leaving behind ghostly images of distant laughter and warmth I’m not allowed to glimpse. I can read on their mother’s blog all about the fun they had with their other grandparents, but that’s as close as I can come.

Young children are such ephemeral creatures, never the same from one day to the next. Babies are the most fleeting of all. Every day I wonder what my little stars-in-my-sky are like now, what they’re doing, what they’re learning. Is Sabrina walking now? Has Max learned to read? Is Maddy still dancing? And I wonder, too, if their parents really understand what they’re doing. That this is something that can never be taken back. No do-overs. They can never give back, to me or to their children, the chance to bond and form a relationship from their earliest days. The kind of relationship that grounds a child in love for life and builds an unbreakable safety net for their hearts. The kind of relationship that soothes a mother’s heart as her world falls apart around her, lightening the burdens of job loss, home loss, health loss, family loss. Instead, I’m a paper grandmother, an insubstantial semi-abstract surrounded by a cloud of quiet, adamant anger.

If hearts were softened tomorrow and things suddenly normalized, there would still always be an empty place in the relationship where that early bonding should have been. The ties will always be weaker. For my part, my love will never be completely free of the pain and uncertainty of knowing that we can be separated again on a whim, for simply saying one wrong thing, or failing to say one right one. For being too broke to send a gift on time. For needing help. For making the children too happy. Even for simply asking to included.

Never the same river

It’s much like living with someone who is terminally ill. Every day could be the last. Every day you prepare to say goodbye. Every night you fall asleep in uncertainty. With each day, my grandchildren become a little more abstract in my heart, concepts rather than real people. Eventually, the heart wears out, forever poised between living and loss.

And one day, when you can’t hold on any longer, you have to let go.

Twelve little girls in two straight lines.

If you were here, little stars-in-my-sky, I’d read to you tonight, Maddy’s special storybook, Madeline. We would snuggle together, and I’d begin:

In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.

“I wouldn’t do straight lines,” Max would say. “I’m a Wild Thing. I make a rumpus, all over North America!”

“We’ll make a rumpus later, I promise. Now let me read for your sister.” Max growls and giggles, and I go on:

In two straight lines they broke their bread
And brushed their teeth
And went to bed.

“Rumpus!” Max growls. “I’ll eat you up!”

“If you want cookies with your rumpus, Max, you’ll have to wait your turn,” I say, with a tickle.

They smiled at the good
and frowned at the bad
and sometimes they were very sad.

They left the house
at half past nine
in two straight lines
in rain or shine –
the smallest one was Madeline.

“That’s my name!” says Maddy, as though the story were new all over again. “Madeline’s brave, like me.”

She was not afraid of mice –
she loved winter, snow and ice,
to the tiger in the zoo
Madeline just said, “Pooh-pooh,”
and nobody knew so well
how to frighten Miss Clavel.

“Was she afraid of monsters?” Maddy asks. No, we tell her, and she liked to tickle Wild Things. And just to show how it’s done, we pooh-pooh Max and tickle him until he forgets all about his wild rumpus.

In the middle of the night
Miss Clavel turned on her light
and said, “Something is not right!”
Little Madeline sat in bed,
cried and cried; her eyes were red.

“I would give her a hug,” Maddy says. “And so would Max,” she adds firmly, giving him a little push. Then she pulls Sabrina into a big soft hug to show us.

Sitting close together, we read how Madeline got sick and had her appendix out, and all the little girls were sad. Max says he wants to drive the car with the red light, and he’d go very fast so Madeline could get well faster. And so he could make a rumpus. He counts the little girls when they go to visit Madeline in their two straight lines, to make sure there are only eleven. But his favorite part is Madeline’s scar.

Visiting Madeline

“Can I have a scar?” he asks, showing us his scarless tummy. Probably someday, I tell him, but it hurts to get a scar. “I’m brave,” he says stoutly. I know, sweetheart, but let’s wait on the scar. It’s much more fun to have a rumpus.

And so we do. With cookies.

May all your wishes come true

Oh, little Bee, your very first birthday is nearly here. One year ago, you came like sunshine into our lives, yet I barely know you. I’ve seen you twice, when you were two months and six months old, and you’re beautiful. That was half your life ago: who are you now, little Bee? Are you a happy child? I heard you’d taken your first steps: do you walk with confidence now? Or do you lurch along after your brother and sister like a little diaper-zombie with a giggle? Do you still have a fuzz of golden hair, or is it growing as rapidly as Maddy’s did at your age? Are there wild ringlets at your neck and ears? Does Maddy put ribbons in your hair? I dream, sometimes, of running my fingers through your curls and tickling your cheek to make you laugh. I’m sure you have a perfect little laugh, all bubbly and bright. A laugh made for zubers and ice cream. Are there words in your babbling? I bet you can say “Max” by now. How many teeth do you have now? Four? Six? More? Do you nibble your crayons like Daddy did?

I have just four of your mother’s beautiful photos of you, little Sabrina-Bee, from half your life ago. And a handful I snapped when we met. Babies are so fleeting: I wonder what you look like now. Perhaps, someday, we can sit down together and go through your photo album and I can finally watch you grow up. I know there are hundreds of photos, kept safe, capturing every day of your life, filled with echoes of baby laughter and excitement. Someday, little star-in-my-sky.

I have gifts for you, little star. I can only guess if they’ll be right for you and not be too young. I still don’t have a job, so I can’t send much. Mostly, what I have for you are the toys I bought when your brother and sister were born, to make a treasure box for them to play with when they came to visit. They’ve never been used, so I hope you won’t mind. I’ll try to guess your size and find something cute for you to wear. That’s something I dreamed of since I was little more than a child myself, buying and making outfits for my littles to wear. I’ll imagine how cute you look wearing it, though I’ll probably never know, until we look at your album someday.

Laugh and have fun, it's your day!

Happy Birthday, my Sabrina. I miss you. You’re part of the web of my life, with your eyes the color of my father’s, your tiny face so like mine and your daddy’s, with eyes shaped like your mother’s and sister’s and brother’s. We’re connected, always and forever, with ribbons of spirit and the breath of life and the very rhythm of my heart. We’re really just a dream apart.

After the rain

It rained last weekend, little stars-in-my-sky, warm summer rain, and I wished you were here to share it with me. We could sit in my favorite place, the corner of the living room under the trees with windows on two sides, so close to the woods. I love to sit there when it rains in the summer, so I can hear the rain shushing down through the leaves and needles, patting and trickling overhead, rushing in the gutters, gurgling down the drainpipes.

We would sit snuggled together, listening to the leaves stirring restlessly in anticipation, and hear the rain approach, stepping closer and closer through the tops of the trees, shush, shush, swish. Then it reaches us and taps at the windows and makes the leaves sing quietly all around. If you listen carefully, you can tell the type of tree by the quality of the sound, did you know? The big-leaf maples patter and splash, the fir whispers an endless low whisper, the cedar drips slowly, and the alders rush and mutter incessantly, leaves spinning and dancing under the falling water. Each has a voice to add to the chorus, making a song as unique as each storm. Branches click and sway a rhythm underneath. We sit and talk softly while the rain patters, watching drops splash on the skylight, unwrapping chocolate kisses for our Cyclops Cookies. Max has chocolate around his mouth where some kisses disappeared, though he suggests the Wild Things captured them, and Maddy is counting to be sure we’ve done enough.

We go to the kitchen to mix the dough, and the rain sings to us there, too, looking over our shoulders through the skylight as we measure and mix, rolling balls of rich dough between our hands and dipping them in sugar. The room smells warm and peanut-buttery as we take the cookies from the oven and press chocolate into the centers. Max teases them as your daddy used to do, poking at the kisses as they warm and melt slightly, leaving fat little dimples in the chocolate from his fingers. We laugh, because we know they’ll taste just as good, and see if we can coax some into silly shapes before they cool enough to eat.

Cyclops cookies, no fingerprints.

Then we snuggle down again with warm cookies and gentle rain, giving Sabrina her special ones without chocolate, so she can explore them with her hands and her mouth and smoosh them into her hair without becoming a chocolate baby. And as we drift off into a quiet nap together, I kiss her golden hair that tastes of peanut butter and sugar, with Max and Maddy pressed warmly to my sides, and think how blessed I am.

Cyclops cookies

Cyclops Cookies

In a large mixer bowl beat together on medium speed about 30 seconds:
½ c. butter or margarine (1 stick)
½ c. peanut butter

Add and beat until fluffy:
½ c. sugar
½ c. brown sugar, packed

Add and beat well:
1 egg
2 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla

Sift together and gradually beat in:
1 ¾ c all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda

If needed, cover and chill dough about 1 hour for easier handling. Prepare:
Additional sugar
Chocolate kisses, unwrapped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Gently shape dough into 1” balls and roll in additional sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are firm. Immediately press a chocolate kiss into the top of each cookie, then lift off cookie sheets to cooling rack. Makes 60.

Whispering sky

I walked on the beach today, little stars-in-my-sky, and in my heart you walked along with me. The water was calm, curling and shushing, mumbling gently over the pebbles, the sun warm after a weekend of rain. Green tangles of washed-up eelgrass everywhere, and clam shells with their shining, smooth purple insides, open like little books. The smell of salt water and warm wood, and underneath the papery sharp smell of the beginnings of fall.

I walked under the trees, in the restless dappled shadows, and stopped, listening. Somewhere, far away from here, did you hear it too? That silvery-golden whisper that comes to leaves when they first begin to feel the chill of cooling nights, close overhead and on high up the hill above me. Spring leaves sound soft and low, barely rustling in their juicy newness. Summer leaves sound full and strong, sliding with saucy confidence against one another, taunting the wind as they feed sunlight to the trees. But the leaves on the first edge of fall sing with a metallic note, no longer supple, touched with brittleness, ready now to rest. The gold that brings them to the ground starts in their voices against the sky, each day a little stronger, until they strike together almost like the metal they resemble before finally they let go and flutter down to earth. Clinging to the branches, they whisper together of the stories the wind tells, of wild winter striding down from Canada, and the sparkling aurora come far south, walking through sun storms to brighten our night. Then gently, one by one, they let go and softly fall.

Already there are drifts of them curled on the ground, some golden and papery and brittle, some bright yellow and green and leathery still, with wild flaming patterns of veins. I kicked my way noisily through the drifts, half dancing up to my ankles in leaves, and imagined you at my side, our feet crackling through a slither of leaves. We would sweep them up into piles, and cover your giggling baby sister in a blanket of brown-gold that smells like nothing else on earth, warm and spicy from a summer drinking the sun, ready to make a warm quilt to tuck the grass in for its winter sleep. With mischief in his blue, blue eyes, Max would pile leaves on Maddy’s head, and while he did I would slyly slip some between his collar and his neck to tickle and crackle against his skin. I would tell you about places I’ve been where the leaves get so deep you would have trouble walking, where we could all burrow and roll in a crunchy golden pile and make snow angels in the leaves. And I’d show you pictures of your daddy, a small boy in a deep blue coat and bobbly hat, burying a laughing, toddling Uncle Michael in crispy leaves the size of dinner plates and throwing huge armfuls into the air to fall once more.

A breeze picks up off the water, grabbing the leaves around my feet and making them dance almost as if your small feet are moving them, step by step with me. Your laughter touches me from far away and mixes with the golden sound of fall whispering in the sky, promising spring and new beginnings, after we rest.

Golden voices of fall

My heart is comforted, little stars-in-my-sky, in the lesson of the leaves. Separation is a part of life. Someday you won’t be small any more. Someday my time will come to sing with the voice of golden fall, then let go and adventure into the wind. But for each ending there is a beginning. We will be together, if not here and now, somewhere, somewhen. My love for you is the rush of spring, the nurturing of summer, the longing of fall, the quiet waiting of winter, an endless flowing circle.

If you listen, I will always be whispering in your sky.

Soft pink phlox at sunset

I went for a walk in the flower garden in the park this evening, little stars-in-my-sky, and I wished on the evening star that you could be with me, while the moon made a sideways smile high above. The sun was sinking down behind the trees that rustled in the wind off the water, whispering secrets to the sky. Perhaps they were asking the sun what wonders it could see just over the horizon, and whether there were whales playing in the straits. I can almost see them, black and white with their tall fins, surging in the syrupy golden light and blue shadows, disappearing into the edge of night in search of salmon.

The garden was getting ready for bed as well, my littles. I was astonished at how tall the scarlet runner beans had grown, with their blossoms like bits of fire waving high against the blue sky, and beans as long as Sabrina’s arm. There were purple beans and beet greens with their deep red stems. I stroked the plush, bendy plumes of wine-red amaranth flowers with their green-red leaves, and thought of how I would tell you about the tiny grain that comes from the plant, and how far away in Africa it’s a common food for children like yourself. I saw the toad lilies, their newly opened colors so bright and their shapes so very strange and alien. And everywhere, the subtle, elusive scent of phlox rising into the cooling air.

There were sweet peas, sharp and intense, with their old-fashioned manners hiding a hint of wildness. Pink and white, lavender, red, masses of complicated ruffles nodding and making the air thick with their perfume that smells like nothing else. I love sweet peas. Did you know my grandmother used to grow them, a riot of blossoms next to the tall tents of beans where I would sometimes hide? I would pick beans still warm from the sun while the air smelled of sweet pea, my toes sinking into the cool earth, and butterflies flitting distractedly all around. I would have told you how sweet and crunchy beans taste with the sunlight still warm on them, while we smelled the sweet peas together, and I could tell you my memories of beans and peas and rhubarb with sugar. Max could tell us that the Wild Things thought flowers weren’t wild enough, so I would tell him how wild sweet peas grow on the rockiest hillsides and hold the soil in place, as tough as any monster, as wild as any rumpus could be. Even Wild Things respect sweet peas.

Sweet peas waving against the evening clouds

But it was the phlox that were everywhere, great pure blue ones, and nodding heads of soft lavender. Their scent is faint, unlike the sweet peas, but there were virtual seas of blooms, so tall we could have played hide and seek among them, and the scent floats everywhere like the air itself. It’s like your mother’s love, or your grandmother’s, always there, part of the background of your life, only half noticed most of the time, sometimes buried under other things. Then, a breeze of life brings it to your heart again, and you’re folded in that love, timeless. That’s what phlox is like for me, a quiet intoxication just beyond thought, part of the fabric of summer, always waiting for a warm golden day or a misty rainy one, binding my heart to my mother’s and my grandmother’s and her mother’s before. And binding my heart to you, and to your someday children, on and on, a shining ribbon in the fabric of the world.

And I’d tuck you to sleep with a handful of phlox, so you could dream of wild whales and love that never ends.

I wish you could be here to help me say goodbye. You’ve only come here once to grandma’s house, and there’s so much I wanted to show you. We’d walk together, and I’d show Max the tree Uncle Michael climbed to the top. I went outside one day and heard what I thought at first was a bird calling, high overhead. Then I heard it again, “Hi, Mom!” and looked up. And up. And up some more. There was my small boy almost 80 feet above me, so high that the treetop swayed when he waved. That’s as high as a building with eight floors, my littles. It took him half the afternoon to climb down again.

I’d show you the places in the woods where your daddy built his forts, and where he and his brothers made in a slide in the sand of the steep hillside. We’d play monster in the dry tent of space under the cedar tree’s branches. We’d climb the steps to the little hidden patio where you can look down on the roof of the house and watch the world without being seen. Maddy would pick an armful of heaven-scented honeysuckle, and tickle little Sabrina-Bee’s nose with the long pale petals. Honeysuckle is the smell of my childhood, carrying forever a perfect moment of the evening star and Beethoven’s Für Elise. I’m still learning it on the piano.

We could sit on a fallen tree and look over the deep ravine behind the house, looking into the tops of trees in the calm green shadows, while I told you of the deer and bears who live there, and the stinging nettles taller than your daddy. You can still see the trail where my three adventurous boys used to climb to the bottom and follow the stream to the beach. And in the stillness of the summer evening, we would hear the birds’ song become sleepy and quiet, and listen for the mysterious sound of seals not so far away, barking stories of their travels through wind and wave. Somehow they always sound like they’re half in another world, one where adventures happen every day, and mysteries every morning. If we could follow them, I know, we’d see wonders. What wonders do you dream, little stars-in-my-sky, when you hear the sound of mystery? What wings do you have then?

For myself, I dream of dancing in the sky with you, with the aurora at our feet and the dawn ahead. Just the four of us, and the moon, and the sleek laughter of seals.