Day 191

Today was a good day for me. I got to work on this stuff. Tomorrow Geoff and I are going to visit Mom, but today I did concrete things to make my life better. I feel more positive tonight. I thought I'd post something I wrote in writing group and edited today.


Tomales Bay, June 23, 2010


Tomales Bay

There is a hard edge to the women in my Mother’s family. I admire it. They are soft and kind, but there is something hard, too. Life is what it is. It’s the characteristic that allows Carrie to work in a children’s burn unit and to work with kids who are in such pain. It is a characteristic that allows them to do the work they need to do, to get it done no matter what. Our great grandmother embodied that persona, and both my Mom and her sister had it too. Part of me believes I have the same edge and the other part knows that I have nothing to armor me. Ultimately there is nothing to protect me from hurting for someone else’s pain.

I felt safe for eight days. I didn’t question myself. The night I let Emma sleep out in the tent with the boys gave me a slight bump but only out of fear that she’d need me in the middle of the night. But she didn’t. She slept through the night and on Friday evening when she returned to be with me, she took herself to bed early because her “eyes were rolling around in her head.” She was much more independent than I had ever experienced her, and my comfort level was accurate, she was feeling safe, too.

I was safe in a soft world a visual color palette that was soothing and not stimulating. Fog wrapped itself around the house and by six or so would begin to drip on the roof and on the gutters. Sage green moss hung off snarly trees and buck colored hillsides lay on the other side of Tomales Bay. An occasional scrub, dark avocado green poked up out of the hill.

The closer you got to the Pacific the more silvery sage or horsetails filled the fields with purple foxgloves, golden California poppies or Shasta daisies in clumps growing up out of the grasses.

Nine female elk crossed the road in front of us and as they traveled into the next field only their heads popped up over the growth. All of it appeared soft, light purple on silvery green. No trees grew out that far and once the soil becomes sand an occasional beach rose appears, but mainly dune grasses reach out into white sand, grey driftwood and a jewel tone blue ocean. Black seal heads pop up along the shore at Limantur Point even the waves were gentle the other day.

Yet I found myself unable to do what I wanted to do physically. I could not take a walk down the wet sand. My lower back felt like nails were being driven into it and my knee felt lame, weak. I was afraid I’d get somewhere I could not get out of and I didn’t take the risk after the second day.

To be honest there were four or five little fiery spats out of Emma during the week, but for the most part I think she was willing to compromise and do stuff other people wanted to do. I think she began to see she could ask politely instead of whine or bellow, that she was being listened to, not ignored until she threw a scene. And I was a little more structured because I didn’t feel as though I had to counterbalance anything.







No, it was a very nice nine days, if only for the color blue.
I needed another week, another week that I could then write and look at my photos and my writing together. Maybe a month would due to begin with. But the first week was a process of detoxification and unfortunately I didn’t get to make creative use of the cleansing. But I was happy.
The other revelation I had during this vacation was what a good job I have done removing alcohol from my everyday life and why it is so important. The drama that alcohol produces is just counter- productive to anything I want to do in my life. So, what I need to do is get healthier, and to keep the drama away and to find places to work on the creative projects I am working on.




A little post script: I have been chased out of places by plenty a bird in my life, but tonight when I went over to inspect the beavers a half a dozen cedar wax wings bombarded me. There must have been babies close, but these guys just flew towards me with jetlike speed. I tried to get a good shot of it, but it was almost 8 and the light was too low for speed shots. Oh well, I live surrounded by pretty cool stuff.