They’re just little bearded guys, but they are the keepers of the flame. They remind me that no matter how dark and treacherous a storm may seem, no matter how thick the fog of grief around me, when I don’t know which way to turn, I just need to keep my eyes open, watching for the light that will guide me home.
Do you remember the “Wake-Up Fairy” who came around after nap time in Kindergarten to touch us gently on the head, signaling us it was time to wake up?
It always takes me by surprise when Mother’s Day rolls around and I feel melancholy. I love being a Mom, but as a daughter, I feel sad.
I want my Mom back.
As I sat alone at the bar at Chez Josephine, I hung my pink beach ball purse on the hook under the bar and ordered my favorite champagne. Before long, the bartender saw my purse and gasped, so I pushed it over to her. She slung it over her arm and paraded around the restaurant for people to admire her. The other women sitting at the bar began gushing about my feathered cape and entire ensemble. I was surrounded by red velvet walls, a blue tin ceiling, dripping chandeliers, and massive images of my favorite icon, Josephine Baker. Someone was singing boisterously in French, and the bar was lively with people shouting and laughing.
I sat quietly, bathed in the soft lights, and just… was.
It was a wild messy gorgeous terrifying journey, the journey of a new life heading into the world over 24 primal hours…
If we had previously looked like Dali’s melted clocks, it now felt like we’d been dropped into one of his surreal paintings.
I watched cats dressed as Dorothy Parker and Harpo Marx, parade by me in the arms of their owners, with people jostling to get photos of them. Try to picture how thrilled the cats were to be dressed up and paraded around.
Kim and I were exhausted after our ritual, like we had taken a night ride in the velvet of darkness in a kingdom where the boundaries of space and time were tossed into the sea.
Is it strange that I want to shrink my Mom and carry her in my pocket so I can have her with me all the time, like a pocket full of starlight that I can throw up in the sky when it seems especially dark?
I bought this skirt for $5 in Venice Beach in 1990, and wore it backpacking all over the world for years. Together we drank cappuccinos in Hemingways cafe in Paris, and espressos on the cliffs of Greece with the cafe owner who didn’t speak English. It was always my skirt, my journal, and me, sitting on the train station steps somewhere.
Christmas this year was not what I expected…
