Flying Through A Rainbow

Dan and I are driving down Polk Street to a morning yoga class. The Oregon March rain has been relentless and the darkened skies makes everyone wish that Spring Equinox would live up to her name. As we turn left on 13^th Street our eyes are cast upward toward the gloomy expanse. There arching across the horizon in all her glory is a brilliant rainbow – spring's answer to our pleas! And this rainbow is no ordinary, out of the crayon box rainbow. Besides the usual red, yellow, blue there is also a visible glow of purple at the bottom. It is one of the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen. Immediately, I am reminded of an essay I wrote in May of 1999 when our daughter, Aspen, was nine years old. I want to put that essay on my blog, I thought. So here it is:

Flying Through a Rainbow

It is a rainy Thursday afternoon and Aspen, my daughter, and I are driving to Pleasant Hill for her weekly piano lesson. We are skimming along the freeway, driving in and out of sun-strewn sprinkles. I notice a faint rainbow off to my left side.

“There's a rainbow,” I tell Aspen. She yanks her head around and sees it clearer than the driver would. “Yes, I see it,” she proudly announces.

As we continue driving, the rainbow seems to follow us. The mountains and forested countryside come more into view and as they do, the rainbow appears to arch from one peak to another.

The colors are deepening now and my daughter mentions that the light from the rainbow looks like it is cutting through the mountain.

“Rainbows are good luck,” I beam.

“We've certainly seen a lot of rainbows this winter,” Aspen adds.

Rainbows – they have always been a thing of magic. They bring up stories of leprechauns, elves and treasure. They bring up memories of my hitchhiking in Ireland, where seeing a rainbow against a deep green meadow from the inside of a lorry appears to be even more wondrous. You just expect to see rainbows in Ireland. And you just expect to be happy whenever you see one.

On the way back from the piano lesson, the rainbow is still arching high in the sky.

“I wonder what it would be like to fly through a rainbow,” remarks Aspen, and with these words from a wise and beautiful child, I suddenly feel a welling inside my stomach of unexplainable sadness.

“I remember the first time I flew in an airplane and we rose above the clouds,” I begin reminiscing. I was on my way to living in Germany for the first time and being above those clouds gave me such a feeling of hope and admiration for the expansiveness of life. But that was more than 30 years ago and here I am – loving being a mother but wondering if I have given up the dreams I started having about my life back then.

Granted I've traveled. Granted I've known passion and zeal and idealism. And yet now, now as I enter my fifth decade, I find myself still yearning to create and carry out the purpose I thought I saw in those rainbows long ago. John Lennon's words are an ongoing echo in my brain: “Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans.”

I keep getting up every morning. I keep packing lunches and making breakfast and either going to work or taking my daughter to school. And then suddenly I'm home, having a latte, reading a book or watching a favorite TV program. I fall into bed and sleep and wake up to another similar day.

Each turn of the clock I swear I'll do it differently: I'll write, I'll clean out the clutter and simplify, I'll lead the creative life I've always dreamed of.

Then I look out the window and I see my daughter come biking down the street. She has a smile on her face that would light up the foggiest afternoon. She's riding that bike like she owns the world, and I remember that this is what's all about: knowing that you can own the world.

Aspen bounds into the kitchen with all the exuberance youth can muster. She has had a positive day at school. This is not always so. At nine she has experienced pain: the pain of rejection and exclusion, the pain of knowing who you are and not fitting in. Her unhappiness at school has paralleled my midlife angst.

I thought my daughter's childhood would be different from mine. I thought if I did it right – nursed her, stayed at home when she was little, did day care so as an only child she'd grow up less lonely, fed her creative instincts, filled the house with handmade toys, books and music – she'd be happy.

Instead I have a contemplative, brilliant and balanced child who wisely experiences both happiness and deep sadness.

Is it genetic, this sensitive, serious approach to life? My daughter shines out at me like the vulnerable child I was and still am. She has brought me more tears and joy than all my previous years without her.

And all I want (and I suppose all my parents wanted for me) is that she finds some deeper meaning to her being here. I want her to be able to grab hold of her purpose and to cling to it despite the avalanche of ordinary life.

“Yes, I agree with Aspen, “wouldn't it be incredible to fly through a rainbow.”

From My Journal: Slowing Down

March 17, 2011: As a child, I was hyper and full of boundless energy. I tell my students I would probably be labeled ADHD. But back in the 50's my elementary school teachers gave me U's (Unsatisfactory) in Citizenship and Cooperation. I wasn't a troublemaker; I simply enjoyed talking and sharing stories. I also had a hard time sitting at a desk for long periods of time, which is still true. At the beginning of a writing session, I find I get up three or four times to recycle newspapers, empty a trash can or feed a cat. But when I finally settle in and focus, the words on the page act as a tether to my ecstatic energy. But I digress.

It took my third grade teacher, Mrs. Miller, to figure out my problem. Her solution was to keep me busy, so, 1. I'd use up my excess energy and 2. I'd quit disturbing the class with my running commentary. She gave me classroom responsibilities, which to a first born is manna from heaven. I became the class cloakroom monitor. In those days we actually had a large walk-in space where coats, hats, gloves and bags were kept. And I became the art monitor...gathering and cleaning up the supplies for the weekly art projects. To this day I have fond memories of Mrs. Miller because rather than punish or demean me with low grades, she made me a productive member of the class.

I can be a quick learner and with teachers and grandparents telling me to shut up, during my latter elementary years and throughout my adolescence I became shy and deathly quiet. My mind was alive and well, however, and when I did meet the teen girls who appreciated my talents, I let down my guard and my words blossomed. At home I continued to tell bedtime stories to my younger sister and to blackmail her, making her my slave in exchange for getting to hear the endings of my stories.

Entering adulthood, I started talking more, and experiencing uncontainable enthusiasms for thought provoking books and philosophical discussions. Then my life just seemed to speed up: college, living and traveling abroad, graduate school, teaching, marriage, raising a daughter, teaching, more traveling; I was always rushing off to somewhere. I was always standing or moving rather than sitting. I kept journals and wrote sporadically. I talked, responding more than listening to almost everyone except my students. Then and now, my students slow me down. My students bring me a deep focus of caring which makes me want to take the time to look inside and understand their world. And nine times out of ten I am able to enter and walk in their tennis shoes. I cherish and am eternally grateful for this gift of empathy I have.

Lately, I have been writing about and observing these precious days I'm being given. Lately, I've been sitting more and slowing down. I hate to think I'm slowing down “on time” as a sixty-three year old woman. I don't want to find I'm doing what “I'm supposed to be doing.” I tend to be a rebel at heart. I'm fighting growing older with all my might, for example, by continuing to talk up a blue streak, walk fast and hang out with inspiring, young people. Though slowing down can happen to anyone at any age, I've always had this tendency of being a late bloomer. Perhaps, however, this major development in my life's span is happening exactly when needed.

For me these days, slowing down is taking a moment to grab onto each and every one of life's beatitudes and to cherish them. It used to be unfathomable to me why people would get up at five in the morning to go for a bird watching walk. This happened multiple times while my daughter and I were in Costa Rica. Because I was traveling, and when I'm traveling I feel compelled to try everything I don't usually try, I got up and tried watching birds. Then I wasn't that excited. Now, though I am not a birder who devotes early mornings to bird watching, I look above me and find birds fascinating as I observe their expansive and delicate wings swooping and swirling through the sky. I remember one road trip to Portland where my eyes became glued to a group of faraway geese. They were flying across the freeway, gathering together and forming a huge V across the sky. How do these birds know to do this? What must it be like to be part of such a graceful flock? Simple questions and simple observations, but oh so meaningful.

The circumstances of our lives can pull us toward slowness. My daughter lives in Portland and is winging her way to total independence. I work part-time with three homebound students four days a week. My husband and I have one car between us and one small house located in a “with it” city that eats granola rather than Wheaties for breakfast. Even my dog, who will turn fourteen this May has been dragging me to relax and pace myself as I take her on her walks. In fact, it is Lacey, who is currently my greatest teacher of slowness. I want to trudge merrily down the neighborhood streets and she wants to meander and smell every clump of grass and fellow dog remnant. I literally have to pull her along to even be able to walk a complete block. She wasn't this way in her youth. We used to be dog-walking race champions! Lacey was exercising me! I tell myself to be more patient for Lacey is nearly ninety-eight in people years. But I am irked by her stopping every few feet when I simply want to walk a steady gait.

Lacey never gives up her fight for a glacial stop-and-go gallop and when I picture myself at ninety-eight with my caregiver dragging me along to move more quickly, I start to understand. Lacey has lived up to her breed by being extremely loyal and protective. We are her tribe and she continues to look out for us. She deserves to be my teacher/master instead of I hers. What she teaches me is this: I need to look at the myriad details of sky and landscape presented to me while I can; I don't always have to be in a hurry for I will get there when I get there; there's more to life than reaching a destination. No doubt I could write volumes about what my dog or cat or friend or family teach me. For growing up never stopped me being a student. And I can't just go on one slow walk with my dog, but I have to go on hundreds before I catch on to her wisdom. Did I mention I am a late bloomer who has to be hit over the head with her daily lessons? I guess at least I have achieved slowness in one category.

In writing this essay I have, like Lacey, been wandering around in a circle, sniffing this memory and sorting through my mind's chatter on my theme. There is no conclusion to why I'm wanting to accept my need for smelling the pine trees, feeling the rose petals or viewing the flight and stillness of winged ones. Maybe my elementary school teachers were right to push me towards a realm beyond words. Maybe they were just trying to get me to observe and listen more than speak. But then I had to speak to learn and though I am again by choice quieter, I need a visible voice; I need my words to understand the deeper purpose of my human living. We each bloom not late but right on time.

True Feminist

For years, I wanted my mother to be someone other than who she was. Or at least I wanted her to get who I was. As the first-born, overly-serious, and tender-hearted one, roles reversed as we both aged. I cared for my mother as though she were the child, protecting her from the razor sharp rages of my father, secretly sewing her a blue wool suit one Christmas, wrapping her in my arms when the hurts and despair became visible on her innocent face. What I really wanted, what I really needed was for my mother to be a mother.

Though my father stimulated the writer in me with his verbosity and eccentric stories, inspired my intellect with the classics, and broadened my cultural horizons with Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky, it was deeper conversations with my mother that I longed for. I yearned to have my mother embrace me with an instinctual love, brought forth from the history of what it meant to be a female. I had little idea of what I was missing until I became a college student and broke out of the authoritarian cage my father had constructed for us. My twenties erupted with the wave of women's consciousness raising groups. Completing my Bachelor of English and German literature, I became acutely aware of the dearth of women writers I had read. Thus began years of my own women's literature studies and the creation of my own women's literature community education classes.

During a lovely spring week while I was attending graduate school, my mother came for a visit. I was extremely enthralled by my course work in Women's Poetry and African American Women's Literature. Wasn't it time to share with my mother something more honest about who this daughter of hers was? Our usual relationship consisted of superficial conversations over coffee and pastries and clothes shopping. Wouldn't it be wonderful for my mother to experience the lyrical voices of women singing their thoughts of personal growth and reflection? Couldn't my mother be stimulated to see being a woman went beyond motherhood and make-up? I would be the gallant damsel riding to rescue my mother from her mundane, narrow existence.

My Women's Poetry class was taught by a highly regarded professor who was one of my advisors and “a true feminist.” I note this last title only because at the time I equated feminism with literary and historical liberation. Feeling like a motherless child, I was in awe of and thirsted for kernels of feminine truths. I decided to bring my mother with me the next day to a class session.

As my mother and I entered the back of the classroom and took our seats, my professor noted my guest by giving me an acknowledging glance. Then the talk and discussion about Adrienne Rich's poetry took off in a whirl of large and small words founded on intellect and ordinary common sense. My undergraduate shyness had dissipated with the ripening of my literate self-awareness and pure love of women writers. I raised my hand and added my comments to the exhilarating swirl of energy. My mother sat politely silent next to me. Her eyes glazed over and I instantly knew this had been a huge mistake. What had ever possessed me to believe my mother could fathom even a smidgen of this life?

I walked out of the poetry class thoughtful and despairing. My mother continued to smile by my side. We reached the cafe with zero comments from my mother about her experience in this class. I was afraid to mention too much about the academic discussion but merely stated my awe and appreciation for the professor. My mother nodded. We sat down at a table by the window and ordered our coffee and pastries. I glanced out the window at the imposing university buildings. I glanced back at my mother, gratefully sipping her coffee. Her stiffened shoulders were relaxed now, her blank stare more focussed. I suggested we could go shopping at the Valley River Mall. I needed a new pair of pants.

My mother's face brightened.

From that visit, I unearthed this gem of wisdom: My mother was my mother and I would never be able to remake her into the vision I wished for. She grew up in the 1920s and 30s and raised us during the 50s. I had the revolution of the 60s and the feminist awareness of the 70s. But can't a person buck one's own given history? Can't a person walk out on the edge rather than cushion oneself in the middle? I was hoping for too much. My mother read gossip rags and Hollywood biographies. My mother never dared to cross my father. My mother lacked curiosity and a sense of adventure.

However, over the years, I saw that it was I who lacked curiosity. Why hadn't I tried to discover the truth of my mother's life rather than feel deprived of the fantasy mother I thought I craved? Uncovering my mother's story would happen slowly. We were visiting my Aunt Davina, my mother's older sister. I remember standing in my aunt's living room refiguring my birth... conceived in January, born in August. “Oh, we wanted children, so it didn't matter.” My mother and my aunt laughed. Then Aunt Davina confided she had conceived my cousin before she and Uncle Paul had married. “What?” I, the supposed revolutionary, suddenly became prim and proper. “I thought no one was supposed to have sex before marriage.” My mother and my aunt gave me broad, wholesome smiles. Later my aunt whispered to me, “Your mother has always been the spoiled youngest. She's frivolous. She doesn't understand the harshness of everyday living.”

My aunt's description of my mother lingered through the years. My father did treat my mother like a naïve child. But when he had a nervous breakdown and was fired from his job, it was Mom who found full-time employment and steadily continued to work throughout our childhood. My mother also

continued to cook, clean and take care of us. My mother had had one other previous marriage and given up my half-brother to be raised by his remarried father. Discovering the truth of this past event took time. My half-brother came to my childhood birthday parties but somewhere in adolescence his presence in our lives disappeared. My mother never talked about him and he never attempted to visit us. “What happened with your first marriage, Mom?” My mom sat me down at the kitchen table and poured us each a cup of strong, black tea. “I met Rex in high school. He wanted to get married right away, but I told him I wanted to get a job and work first.” My eyes widened. Here were facts of revolution, not compliance.

In the 50's, women got married and had children...or so I believed. But my mother never raised me with these goals. She raised me to believe that whatever I chose to do would be the right thing. She never judged me. She never asked when I was going to get married. Though I fought her battles with my father, as an adult she told me not to let my father see my tears or my frustrations. “ Be strong,” she encouraged. “So why did you leave Rex? Why did you leave my half brother Wayne?” My mother's face contorted in puzzlement and her eyes drooped and dimmed. “I worked for several years for “The Glendale Star” newspaper. I loved my job, but Rex kept badgering me. We got married and I thought this was what I wanted. But I wasn't happy. After a few years I thought if I had a child, I might feel better. So I had Wayne. But it didn't make any difference. I told Rex I wanted a divorce and he said only if I gave him custody of Wayne. And so I did.”

Try as I might, I could never discover how my mother felt about giving up her first born child. She walked away from that first marriage and kept her promise by rarely seeing Wayne. It wasn't until I had my daughter that I began to understand the pain of this decision. My mother's feelings were buried deep. Though we occasionally interacted with Wayne, to my mother we were her authentic children. And though marrying my father might have begun happily, his later post-war mental depression would make my mother's life hellish.

So her story was not as simple as my aunt believed. Life's harshness knocked on my mother's door several times. Puzzle pieces were beginning to interlock: my mother worked before marriage; my mother initiated her divorce from an unhappy marriage; my mother began supporting us when my father faltered. Could the definition of feminism be expanded to include my mother?

I had come to believe my mother was the weak and powerless one. She rarely, if ever, stood up to my father. He made all decisions regarding furniture, carpet, house paint, garden, etc. He decided the destinations of all vacations and my mother did all the packing preparations. He decided what books and music were in the house. When he came home from work he expected to be served dinner and never washed a dish. These details for me described a marriage I vowed I would never have. I will be able to discourse with my partner and we will share equally in the determination of our relationship, I promised.

After my father died, I uncovered some of the final puzzle pieces. We all worried about my mother, and how she would cope. But then we discovered boxes of organized folders covering house deed, bills, insurance,etc. in my mother's handwriting. She was, and always had been, the household manager. My mother's brightest years began when my father passed away. She completely redecorated our childhood home. She bought records of music she liked and listened to her own radio stations. Though my mother had never been a reader, she began reading biographies about her favorite celebrities. My relationship with my mother did not really change, but my perception of who my

mother was and had been was beginning to reshape itself.

Every daughter tells herself she won't be like her mother. But it is the mother who tries to clear or bend the branches in front of her so the daughter can emerge from the woods less torn than she was. When my mother went to work, she stepped outside her box. When my mother gave up her first child, she was trying to reclaim her own life. When my mother encouraged me to believe in myself, she gave me permission to take a different path. It took years for me to forgive my mother for not standing up to my father. But the definition of her feminism could only stretch so far. During her last years, we shared often how much we loved each other. She provided the stepping stone I needed to become the questioning, independent woman I am. I gratefully have not experienced the harshness of domestic emotional belittling and cruelty my mother experienced. My mother was hardly the spoiled child my aunt referred to. She endured. She survived to gift me her true feminine strength. My mother never professed to understand what a feminist was and yet she gave me the time and the ability to uncover its broader definition. My mother died recently and I now realize it was she who was the damsel who rode to my rescue.

The Sixties

 I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and see “me.” There's a young soul inside even though my hair has turned completely silver and my hands have that weathered, wrinkled, translucent sheen. My eyes continue to sparkle, though surrounded by creases and thinning eyelashes. I wonder if most people in their sixties are as astounded as I am by the whizzing whirl of time. How have I lived so long? Yet why does my life seem so short? It is as if all the other passages of my existence have taken place on a different planet or in another dimension. Who was that kid who organized neighborhood carnivals? And that young, naive girl in her twenties who had no fear of crossing the globe to live and travel in foreign lands? Was that really me?

Have Dan and I really been together for over thirty years? Did I really have a baby and nurture her to full blown womanhood? Sitting here at my kitchen table it is as if I have always sat here while my life happened around me. My home breathes with the parties and gatherings thrown, the voices echoing off the walls, the thunderous clunking of children and friends. And I continue to sit at my kitchen table. And I continue to struggle to find the words to describe how life feels, how life simply is. At times I miss the noise; at times I cherish the surrounding silence.

On my neighborhood walks, I watch as elders use canes to maneuver their steps on the sidewalk. I listen attentively as friends share about ailments or healing from long ago surgery. I give compassion to an acquaintance whose father has alzheimer's and sometimes forgets who she is. Do I have to get old, I wonder? I mean, do I have to get old in the traditional way? Even as I sat with my dying mother I cannot say this experience encouraged me to be any less afraid of aging and dying.

A friend remarked, “Aren't we all afraid to die?”

“Yes, I suppose, but I don't want to die; I love life so much.”

“Oh,” replied this friend.

Death has been more on my mind since entering the sixties. I remember in my early twenties, sitting in my new miniature boarding room in Germany, getting ready to begin teaching in a German “Mittelschule” for the following year. It was to be my second extended living and traveling in Europe and this time I felt totally lonely and asked myself what the hell I was doing half way across the world from family and friends. I brought my treasured The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda and was thumbing through the well worn pages seeking definitive answers to my existence. “Death is always on your shoulder,” stated Don Juan. I scanned my second floor room: one twin bed, one sink and one white wooden closet; one window to the courtyard, one door to open to a new world, one me to open the door. Tears surface as I think about the young searching girl I was then and how that teaching year brought me amazing students and two of my dearest friends, Imre and Isabel.

My fears, my challenges push me into living my fullest life. The sixties are bringing me new words, new women friends, renewed confidence and gratitude for an adventurous spirit ready to roam. Death is right out in front of me, where she has always been. But now I can see her clearly winking and smiling. After my mother's death, the first thought that entered my mind was, “As the family's oldest, I'm next in line...I'm next to walk off the cliff into oblivion.” Death reminds me, however, that the young girl I was and the elder woman I am becoming can join hands and step together into the future, embracing my older years. I am not convinced I will ever be able to prepare for death. However, when I've sat at my kitchen table long enough, possibly I'll know my life simply is and death is simply part of this life. Hold on dear girl and when the time comes we shall jump together!

Daughter On The Couch

 Daughter lying on the couch, fully dressed under a red queen size comforter.

How hard it was for me to get up this morning, having stayed up late while the daughter finished a composition assignment, using the computer in our bedroom. I want to move that computer I thought last night. But I got up and dragged myself into the bathroom...I have my routine and making breakfast for this teen daughter is part of it. Put away dishes, set the table, put on a pot of oatmeal, wake the daughter, do last night's dishes. I am organized and intense about getting her to school on time. Part of the routine is this daughter telling me it will be fine and she won't be late. This morning, she comes into the kitchen quicker than usual. She has cramps so bad, she feels like throwing up.

Daughter lying on the couch under a red queen size comforter.

I tell her she can stay home from school. She swallows two Ibuprofen and makes her way to the couch. She never wants to listen to her mother about natural remedies for menstrual cramps. I then give her some calcium/magnesium and ask if she wants to try the heating pad. To my surprise, she says yes. When I put the heating pad on and it works to soothe the cramps, she is amazed. I guess moms can be right once in awhile.

Daughter sleeping on the couch under a comforter.

I call my daughter's school to say she isn't feeling well. I've done my running around this morning, so now there is no need to hurry. Time is an odd dimension. I frantically race against it, and then at times like these it spits itself back up at me. Suddenly, I am gripped by panic. I look at my daughter's tender, still childlike face and wish her growing up didn't tear into my heart, but it does. I always yearn to wrap her in cellophane against outside contamination. Maybe I really need to wrap myself up. We had this talk last night about the tedium of high school and the choice-less future of college. On the one hand she will mention a yearning to attend an incredible college such as Sarah Lawrence and then she will retreat into not wanting to enter the academic world at all. When I ask her what she needs, she ends by stating: “I want out of school; I want to drop out.”

Daughter sleeping on the couch.

I put a load of laundry in and prepare for my tutoring sessions. I check my e-mail and continue to be seized by a searing sadness. In an e-mail to a friend I write HOW MY DAUGHTER HAS ALL THIS TALENT and I worry that she won't use it. I quickly realize it is me who is not using my talent and I add this revelation to the e-mail and send it off. I have been inside this deep well for weeks now: continuing to struggle with my purpose, continuing to see how much time I do have to write, wondering why I complain when I have so much to be grateful for. I don't want to get old, but the years are passing by and I am approaching sixty this next year. I am caught in a domestic routine of my own making. I love my home and I love my family, but sometimes I just want to run naked down the neighborhood streets and declare my crazy uniqueness for all to see. But I am very private about my body, so streaking won't work.

Daughter sleeping.

The sadness lifts and then comes back. I want to move my daughter to a bed, but she is at peace. I say and do all the wrong things now, and wish I had a magic wand. When she was little she loved dressing up and being a fairy or a magician or a witch. During middle school she dressed in nothing but black; I had to bite my tongue. She wanted to fade, to not be seen, she told me. My stomach twisted and turned then more than it ever has. But she added color and created her own persona through her clothing choices, I finally let my breath out. She is a slender five foot nine, with auburn hair, blue eyes and strikingly beautiful. Like her mother she is a feminist who doesn't buy into the beauty media crap. But her beauty stuns me. I sometimes wish I knew what it was like to have such beauty.

I hear my daughter breathing. The oatmeal is cold. I gather fresh laundry from the dryer and it is warm against my breasts. The sun is streaming in through the kitchen window and maybe I can thaw out this aching. The phone rings and it is my first tutoring session. A family emergency cancels this session for today, and time spits up at me again. I am writing and hoping the words will bandage my hurts. I have it all, except for money and fame. My shallowness surprises me as I grow older. I should know better now and yet I still enjoy new clothes or trying to create an outward characterization of who I aspire to be. I want to be unique and yet hip. But I will never be cool in any sense. I have always felt and been different, and now I wish this wasn't so. I understand my daughter's pain at being an individual in a high school that praises conformity. Her steering away from college is only a symptom of her creative, artistic spirit.

Daughter sleeping.

Our daughter is more talented, intelligent and creative than either Dan or I. Or maybe it's just that she had a childhood of constant encouragement, support and loving nurturance. Dan and I were loved, but not necessarily encouraged. Critique runs in my family and I have seen it seep out of my mouth and into my own home. I worry that the father and mother inside me have contaminated my parenting. I have given her all I have and then some. I have worked on stepping back to the sidelines as she has become a teenager. I know my love can be over-abundant and still I don't know if she understands how much we do love and support her. We have been democratic and alternative parents...like many baby boomers who ran through the idealism of the sixties and have tried to pass this on to our kin.

Daughter waking.

The sun is warming the table where I sit. My daughter is stirring. What time is it, she wonders as she strolls into the kitchen. She has slept for several hours and I ask if she now wants breakfast. Sure, she says. I reheat the oatmeal and she sits down across from me. She tells me again the heating pad worked and she will use it again in the future. Score one for mom. I have to put a hold on my writing but feel more awake than I did in the early hour of the darker morning. I have had some chocolate and a cup of warm Inka. I thought the chocolate would do the trick, but the heavy emotions linger. My daughter's face of contentment as she eats reassures my mothering instincts. She moves into our “star room” and I bring the comforter to her. This “star room” used to be her bedroom when she was small. It has those glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and now contains all her childhood storybooks on the shelves. She has grown up into the sky-lighted attic bedroom. But I note that whenever she doesn't feel well, she curls up on the futon couch in her old room.

Daughter watching a movie.

I return from walking our dog with the sadness and the uncertainty of who I am shed like a layer of first skin. And this is it. I will never stop shedding my skin day in and day out. I love having my daughter home from school. I love having a moment here and there to mother her. I remember now part of our conversation from last night. She mentioned how every day at least ten times a day she hears, “Oh that's so gay!” and every day at least once a day she hears the word, “fag or faggot.” I say how as a teacher I always stood up to these comments and how people need to make people aware. But I didn't mean this comment to be directed at my daughter. “I can't reprimand people all day long,” she says. I know...But I plead the stupidity and unfounded homophobic fear of humans. She is quiet and I am quiet. This lesbian, queer identified daughter is beautiful beyond words. I cannot save her from the world. But I wish I could.

Daughter

By evening my daughter is feeling better and I am too. She has basked in my nurturance and I have basked in her presence. “I know we often don't agree, but I do love you,” she shares. I understand the deep divide a mother and daughter must walk across; each reaching her own path on the other side. I wobble as I walk, but I am making it. I have reacted and taken comments far too personally. But I have grown and am growing. She does her homework and comes downstairs to say good night. I give her the biggest hug I can muster with an added kiss on the cheek. She smiles. I know I could have slept in this morning, buy I'm glad I didn't.