the year my father died

the year my father died, i graduated from whitman, took a road trip up the coast of california with my mom in a bright red convertible to try to celebrate life and then moved 3,000 miles away to alaska with people i'd never met before.
(except joel. hi joel, if you ever read this.)
i was following Jesus, and i thought he might be in alaska. i can't say i regret it, but i can't say i'd do it the same again. i would say that i'd follow Jesus wherever and however, so maybe i would do it again. hard to know, because that drive to anchorage was heart breaking. the woods and the moose and bear and alaska all looked like my father so very much. he was a hunter and a woodsman. he loved the land of the midnight sun.
on january 14th of that year, i walked deep into the woods by myself and wept and rocked myself while standing cold in the snow and talked to the trees and to my dad and told him that i would miss him forever. i walked so far off of the trail that i was sure no one could hear me, not that being near the trail would mean anyone would've heard me either. alaska is alaska...there's really no one around wherever you go.
i had a big breakfast that morning with maple syrup and pancakes, my dad's favorite since he was a new hampshirite, and then wrote him a long letter. when i headed off to the woods, i brought a framed picture of us and then put both the letter and our faces on a tall noble fir tree deep in that forest, covered in thick snow. before i walked away i dropped a rose that i bought down in town and headed back for the trail.
that was the first anniversary of his death; i remember feeling that i was leaving a huge heavy boulder of grief behind in the woods as i walked back to roads and cars and my apartment and job and life.
all the way home i looked around me in the woods and imagined my father walking along next to me, framed by a landscape that would have suited him so well.
i listened to him on a nearby hill yell across the valley to me that he loved me, he loved me.

a few years later my brother, his family, and my mom and her future husband and michael and me met in the tetons to spread my dad's ashes. i was pregnant with mozea at the time, and michael and i had made a long trip in our beat-up vanagon from portland to wyoming at the end of september, when the elk bugle, to cast my father to the wind. we spread his ashes on a hill overlooking the snake river and then poured on the ground a bottle of estes park sampson stout that he saved for a special occasion along with all of our prayers and tears. i think i sang a song, i can't remember. we were all dealing with the pain of the day in our own peculiar ways...my brother took a thousand photographs and his kids ran around and played with sticks while we spread dad's remains. my mom played a tape of elk bugling and cried desperately and i held michael's hand tight. the morning air was cold and quick, the morning air my father preferred. it was a perfect temperature for maple syrup and pancakes.
i remember everyone was being incredibly delicate with the ashes. they put on special gloves and were slow and demure as they spread them towards the snake river.
as i'm sure you can imagine, i did nothing of the sort.
i rolled up my sleeves and plunged my bare hands into my dad's remains and then closed my fists tight, as tight as i could, and held him for a long time before letting him go.
my dad's remains were sticky. they weren't like normal ash or dirt. they stayed with you.
it was windy that morning and the ashes blew all over us. it seemed like people felt kind of uncomfortable with dad blowing every-which-way, getting stuck in eyelashes and under shirt collars, but i liked having dad all over me. when no one was paying much attention, i put my hands in the urn a second time and rubbed his ashes all over my face and hair and neck and arms and then closed the lid and carried his box down the hill with me that contained the things he was carrying the morning he died (a 2$ bill, his glasses, some unopened chapstick, and a silver cross that he said he'd always have in his pocket just in case it was true).
michael and i drove to jenny lake after we watched some elk rut in the middle of a thorough fare and said goodbye to my family.
the sun was setting over the grand tetons and i caught a glimpse of myself in our vanagon's spotty side mirror. i had my father's grey remains all over me, my hair was a dingy shade and my skin and painting shirt looked silty. whenever i touched my hand to my mouth i could taste the dusty salt, my dad.
i grabbed michael's hand as we drove out of yellowstone in the late autumn light.
with my husband, our baby in my belly, and my father all over me we drove back to portland.
the year my father died i turned 21.
that year began the darkest and most desperate five years of my life.
those years ended with the birth of my daughter, mozea.
she came a few months after we gave my father to the wind.

mean mama

i was mean to my girls this morning.
and the show went down for all to see at the woodstock library.
it made me sick and feel like a low-life, but i was so angry and hormonal and freaky.
i couldn't stop, despite the audible pleading with the One who can clear these things up: "God, please help me be good to them. I need your help right now. Right now. Hurry up or it's gonna get bad."
it doesn't happen very often, thank God, because i am married to an amazing man who is a full partner with me in loving our girls. i would be a tragic single mom.
but today i was the twin one of those women you see at grocery stores or banks or other bad mom spots, where bad moms hang out and yell at their kids. bad moms who are exhausted but have to buy something to feed the noise. bad moms whose gut and thighs are bigger than their husband's and who can't do anything but have fried, split-ends and brown-coffee teeth. those people you shake your head at and want to deprive of the very air they are stealing from all of the good people in the room, like yourself.
even the librarian lowered her voice and asked me if i needed help with anything, and i could tell she meant "help" in more than a "can i help you find barney's best pals go to the bouncy castle?" kind of a way.
she packed my back pack for me upon checking out mozea's books and wished me well before she sent me out the door.
then things really got nuts.
i couldn't find the key to the van. ruah was screaming and pulling my hair. mozie was screaming and pulling ruah's hair. both of them were falling out of my arms and mozea's baby doll stroller was about to get thrown across the street and into the library parking lot if it didn't cooperate and stop falling out of my pinkie finger grasp.
we were a tumult. a writhing psycho circus with a giant bad mom clown fueling the craziness for the entire show, curtains and all.
i broke into our van and put the girls in their seats and then proceeded to bawl while i yelled at mozea that i was crying because i couldn't find the keys and what were we going to do now?! we have no other key! this is a volkswagen--you get your spare key from a shop in europe for $100 dollars! one-hundred-dollars!
while i went on with my bawling soliloquy, i got on all fours and started climbing under the van, looking under the tires, desperately hoping that God would show up and do something for this insane woman who didn't deserve anything but to be put in a very long time-out.
and then it came.
"mama, the keys in da napkim."
"mama, the napkim. the napkim."
mozea's little voice tried to bellow over my tragic hormonal state.
i felt a nudge to be quiet and listen, and so i listened to the only thing i could hear--mozea.
she had put the key in the wipes container and shut the lid to make a shaker, and then threw it to the outer reaches of the van's interior.
she was telling me she put the keys in with the napkins, and
there is no way i would have ever found it.
never.
we would have gotten second jobs to pay for the new key before that van would've moved from woodstock library.
i climbed up next to mozea, hugged her, sobbing, and asked her to forgive me.
i loved her, i loved her, i loved her.
"ok. it's ok. mama? upset?"
i just sobbed and mozea and ruah laughed and laughed, thinking it was just a funny face i was making to end the show, to draw the curtain on the circus from hell that had been our morning.
when i got into the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition i asked mozie to pray for me, because, as she could see, mama was having a very hard day.
"yeah. ok....pray God for mama...for van key...not upset. van key in da napkim."
what grace.
who deserves this immediate forgiveness and re-admittance into the good mom seats?
who deserves this from their child? their baby?
not me.

mozea in the morning

mozie woke up yesterday morning reading her bi-mart coupon book in bed at full voice.
michael was reading it to her before she went to bed: "99 cents, cascade liquid detergent. buy one get one free glade plug-ins. mr. coffee coffee filters, 3.99...."
i just laid in bed at the ripe ol' hour of 7:30 am and waited for her to read herself back to sleep.
around 7:40, she started 'crowing' at me: "mama! mama! cah cah! cah cah!"
her ears are all stinky in the morning. i love it. it's this little mozie stink cradled right between her fat cheeks and her ear lobe. it's the nights' drool, i'm sure. i tell her she has stinky ears and she says "i have stinky ears, mama!" in this awesome two-year old tiny voice.

this morning, after coming downstairs, she sat on the heater and nursed oscar the grouch. i could see his little silver garbage can sticking out from under her shirt.

ruah is all over me with love and affection. i'm not sure what to do with it, but receive it, which is a very hard thing to do when you're someone like me.
i love these girls. they've pushed out my hipbones to the point of no return, and they've radically jolted my life so i wake up at 6 am and then 7 am and sometimes 1 and 2 and 3 am and they crow at me and have stinky ears and they cry for me and want me. this love, this unspeakable love.
it's a little hard to take, but i'll keep praying my way....