Chihuahua Medicine, Grandmother and the Infantile Ego

This week, as a summer job, my son is taking care of our friends’ four dogs: three chihuahuas and a pug/spaniel mix with digestive issues. This means that in the dream that is my life, I’m spending a good deal of time negotiating with the needs of little raw nerves.  There’s nothing extraneous on these animals.  Barely any hair, no fat, just the trembling, uninsulated response to absolutely every sound, movement, smell, emotion, or need around them.  It’s fascinating; nothing is hidden.  I watch amazed for  extended periods of time as raw experience ripples through their tiny bodies.

Alone, they would expire.  They need to be swaddled and snuggled, sheathed in warmth and love.  They bundle together on soft things, preferably something much larger and warm-blooded.  Unenhanced by other mammals’ seductive allure, they seem to be the perfect representation of nature’s raw need for connection, that root part of us that needs desperately and doesn’t have anything to offer in return except the palpable relief of being saved from the terrifying overwhelm of isolation.  They don’t know how to buy love the way we’ve been taught; nobody told them it had to be earned.

I had a vision a while back of the liminal place between what we come from and what we do with it.  A Grandmother sat tending a fire in a cave, though the night sky above was open space.  I handed her a crying baby, the child of a young friend, and immediately the infant settled, went from squalling need to serene awareness experiencing everything around her with limitless wonder.  All of creation drew a deep breath of gratitude, and Grandmother smiled and told us to go be grownups. 

My life hasn’t been working lately, and all roads of inquiry as to why lead back to this place, the part of me that is designed only to connect, the circuit fallen away from the motherboard that makes it all run.  I’ve sat bewildered by my inability to respond, wondered what I needed to do or become to make it all better, not realizing that this part of me does not have the equipment for any of that.  Without this piece in place, nothing is as it should be. 

Life thumps us and parts of us go missing, dislodged from where they are meant to be, essential links in the grid between matter and spirit.  Dissociation, soul loss, winked-out lights in the DNA chain; such terrible and bewildered sadness.  All aberrant behavior can be traced to this infantile ego exposed on a hillside, not wailing for fear of attracting predators. 

But we are designed to self repair.  In every cell is the instinct to seek the warmth and light that has temporarily gone out of us, if we would only remember it is ours by definition. Lives spent in shame-based scheming and strategizing may have taught us otherwise, but this love is our birth right, and like anything that is truly ours, we need only claim it.

So I’m here on my couch surrounded by these gentle little dogs, cherishing their shameless pleasure in the comfort offered by soft blankets and a warm body.  I think I’ll just close my eyes and breathe with them for a while, then see what I can do about this business of being a grownup. 

With love,

Mia

What Can I Get You?

Crow Mother, Her Eyes, Her Eggs ~ Meinrad Craighead

Last night I dreamt I was part of an espionage team on a mission that had gone terribly wrong.  We were in danger, and we broke into a dusty old mansion with heavy curtains over the windows, planning to regroup and prepare for the next assault.  Each of us proceeded to do what we do, what we were trained to do, but everyone was shaken and frightened, not sure we were going to survive what was coming. 

Then someone brought in the Specialist.  She was an older woman, Eastern European, with a helmet of dyed black hair.  She was plump and wore a short sequined tuxedo jacket with tails, and spangly tights, like a magician in Vegas.  Her overly made-up appearance seemed laughable, and a younger woman on the team sneered and said, “The fuck is she gonna do?”  But the guy standing next to her smiled and said, “Just watch.”  

The Specialist proceeded to set up and begin tending bar with a quiet professionalism and dignity.  As we looked on, enthralled, it became apparent that she was doing much more than tending bar, that she was a practitioner of great power and skill, and she was not serving what we at first thought.  The younger woman watched with open admiration and said only, “Wow.” 

The Dark Goddess.  She is not serving cocktails and she is not in service to the caricature that is her disguise.  The truth of what she serves is frankly a little scary, remembering that she has been called in because we are in danger and she is here to get the job done.  

If you were foolish enough to catch her eye and she asked, “What can I get you?” would you place an order?  Would that be wise?  Is there a single thing you could ask of that kind of power that would not have consequences?  For me I think I’ll just stand off to the side and watch.

The Renovation

I dreamt last night that I had to leave an old house where I used to live as it was falling down around me.  Everything was moist, like the inside of a body, and I was frantically and ineffectively trying to collect everything I thought was important.  Then I was walking up the hill towards this house feeling terrible shame.  My house had been destroyed and my mother was right, I would never succeed at anything; I had failed, I was ruined.  I stepped over piles of glass, windows that had blown out from other structures.  When I got to my house, though, I was surprised to see that it had been charmingly renovated.  There were flower boxes in the windows, the façade in front had been cleared of debris and clutter, and the stairs had been moved from the front to the right side.  The place looked ten times bigger, so much more open, and I knew the inside would be clear as well. 

In 1980, I met my husband in this house.  Michael was literally the boy next door; he lived in the flat above me in this funky old San Francisco Victorian that had survived the earthquake in ’06.  He eventually moved in with me in the middle flat, and we lived there until 2002, when we finally moved to Marin, letting go of paying less then $800 for a rent-controlled, three-bedroom flat.  Our son was born there, on the sofabed, because he came early and our bedroom was being painted at the time due to a last-minute nesting urge.  The hot water was so slow it took an hour to fill the tub.  The floor had become an unintentional work of art having suffered hippies, musicians, pets and children; but it somehow worked.  People would ask me how I’d accomplished just that effect, and I would explain that if you don’t bother something for a long period of time, it will become beautiful.  

So, no, not the place most mothers would love. 

After Michael died, I made the mistake of going by that old house as I drove through town on my way to sell a few of his less-loved guitars. Seeing it, I sobbed until I made myself sick.  We lived there together for over twenty years, more than I’ve lived anywhere before or since.  We began as singles, became a couple, and grew into a family; no longer satellites of other dysfunctional systems, but the center of our own lives.  We built a place where we were safe from the disapproval outside, like refugees.  Mostly, we didn’t bother each other, and let one another grow beautiful. 

When Michael died he turned into a crow for a bit, and since then I’ve felt that crows follow me wherever I go.  Part of me suspects it’s nothing personal; crows are everywhere.  But I’m grateful for a symbol so ubiquitous, and comfort is never far away.  During a gray moment after the eclipse I heard a crow outside, and I felt so loved. A moment later, I heard the crow call from slightly further away and I got scared and said, “Don’t go!” 

Suddenly all I could feel was the beauty – of that dilapidated house, of the club we formed together that would have us as members, of this small moment in time where I could let go of making the renovations myself.  I could even see the beauty of Michael’s cancer, how it turned the structure of his limitations into a mush from which he has emerged transformed.  I felt Michael expanding beyond my comprehension, just as our 18-year-old son is getting ready to leave home, and around me there are nothing but open doors.  

I said it again, I said, “Don’t go.” 

Then I heard Michael’s voice, amused and tender, and he said, “How could I?” 

Love always transcends every form it takes, containing and releasing with impeccable precision and skill.  Love never leaves; it can’t.  It will always be the only thing left standing.  And maybe the best thing we can do for one another is to make ourselves into shapes and hold each other while we calm down enough to remember that we are free.  May it be so.

With love,

Mia

The Doorway Home

I began this journey in sadness, mourning the loss of my cat companion of ten years, a little black cat named Sabina.  Sabina was not an easy cat.  She didn’t like to be picked up, she swiped at family members as they walked by, and preferred to be outdoors.  Like many cats, she was devoid of humor – or else her humor was too dark to be appreciated by most.  But she and I understood one another, and she would sit by me when I worked or meditated.  When I walked the dog she would walk with us. She might run ahead a little or drop behind, or dodge into the bushes when a car or a person came by, but she stayed with us.  In all three of the houses we shared, she met me when I came home and accompanied me from my car to the front door.  Sometimes she came in.  She liked her space. 

So I was back in grief.  And while it was a different grief than the loss of my husband, it fingered the same notes.  There is something immediate about the loss of an animal friend; the full impact of it hits right away.  A human loved one seems to leave more gradually, the psyche only allowing itself to experience parts of the loss at a time until one day it all adds up and you realize they’re never, ever coming back.  Sabina’s death, abrupt and unexpected and still unexplained, landed me right in the center of my most abandoned self without preamble or the chance to cushion the fall. 

I spent a few days hoping to scramble out of this terrible place before I got too badly burned.  As I often do, I focused on the bright side of pain hoping I wouldn’t have to see the dark.  But that never lasts for long.  I pretty quickly resigned myself to the fact I was heading someplace hard.  I had no choice but to be led by the tender nose of my sorrow into the place I most avoid. 

This is the place of no-self, the mother of all soul loss.  It is a place without a fix.  No coach-induced modification of behavior, thought or diet will get me out of having to sit here, at some point, and feel the cumulative effect of all the times I have abandoned myself.  I can put it off, and sometimes it seems to disappear like a cat into the shadows, but it tracks me wherever I go.  In it is the truth that the only thing missing from my life has been me.  If I can sit unprotesting in this place, acknowledging the consequences of that truth, I have found the doorway home. 

 

This morning I was called back to life by the sight of a great blue heron landing on the roof of the house across the creek.  Its blue-gray coloring on a foggy morning mimicked the mists of the liminal state through which I’d been traveling.  It stood, elegant and certain, belonging first to the community of itself, and so very much a part of the world.  I went outside in my stocking feet to see it more closely, and we stood together in stillness. 

At the end of this journey I am left with the certainty that I am no longer willing to live half a life.  I feel as though I’ve been sitting in a waiting room not quite concentrating on magazines, glancing at the pictures and looking expectantly at the door where my next appointment will be.  It seemed this morning as though the heron opened that door and beckoned me in, and perhaps I only thought I saw a little black cat dart between its legs into whatever lay beyond. 

With love,

Mia

Medicine Dream

River-Rebirth by Sandra Mikus

I went to bed last night with the makings of a cold – a sore throat and a defeated achiness that made everything seem heavy and hard.  It felt like the perfect expression of where my grief has led me of late, moist and acidic, and not a place to linger.  As I dropped into sleep, I asked my dreams for help.

I dreamt I was in a dry South Asian country, and that an unwanted authority had taken over.  Suddenly we had no autonomy, and had to follow senseless rules.  Our lives were not our own.  I was walking someplace I was not permitted to be, and I saw a plant that was dying.  I knew the laws dictated I must leave it alone to rot, but I couldn’t.  I didn’t feel courage or fear; it was just not in my nature to let it die. 

The plant was a potted palm, and there was decay in one of the stems.  I took hold of it, and the top separated from the stem, leaving behind a glistening, bright green stump. The part I had in my hand separated again into the leafy top and a connecting piece, both dripping the same verdant juice.   I was immediately aware that all three pieces were viable new growth.  The stump in the soil would sprout new stems, and the leafy top would easily root.  The connecting piece was interesting: androgynous, undefined, and full of potential; you could plant it up or down and it would root or leaf depending on what orientation you chose. 

Frightened and controlling parts of self may want us to walk past our grieving, leaving it to rot in septic puddles of neglect.  But grief properly tended yields abundance and renewal.  We become more than what we were.  Today my body feels raw, like the glistening vulnerability of the place on the stem that let go, but I no longer feel like a conquered nation, powerless in my own land.  I have reclaimed my state, and possibilities abound.

My mother taught me how to listen to my dreams.  We would sit at the kitchen table and she would tell me where she’d been at night, and because I was a child, all I had to do was listen.  She wasn’t asking me to interpret them for her, just be a witness, an anchor in the waking world. 

Dreams, like grief, are meant to be shared. It is the means by which we irrigate our lives from the infinite pool we find when we follow the river in the marrow of our bones.  It is not enough to incubate and cradle our own dreams.  If they are to learn to walk in this world, they must be heard by another. 

Thank you, always, for listening. 

Letting Go

I took off my wedding ring Wednesday night.  It began as an experiment; I wanted to see what it would feel like.  And then I found myself reluctant to put it back on.  The skin where it had been was pink, like the new skin you find when you pick a scab.  For a day I wore the ring around my neck, but I can’t sleep with jewelry on so I took the necklace off that night.  The next day I found Michael’s ring and I placed both our rings on an altar, mine nestled inside his.

This morning I panicked and tried putting the ring back.  It slipped right on, comfortably resuming it’s place in the dent on my finger.  When I tried to slide it off, it stuck, like a reluctant dog who’s been asked to vacate the ease of a soft armchair. That made me feel even more panicky, so I worked it off again and sat with both rings in my hand.           

Michael and I knew that we are old, old friends, and holding those rings I saw what they symbolized pales in comparison to what we are and always will be to one another.  As I let go of the roles the rings represented – roles in which we were never entirely comfortable – what streamed in were all the lifetimes we’d shared, all that we’ve ever been to each other.  We’d been everything, explored every possibility, and in every possible configuration.  And throughout it all was the thread of his patience with me.

All of that became part of me again when I released us from the cramped space of Michael and Mia, husband and wife. Michael’s essence is part of everything I  have built in this life, the way water is part of a tree.  As I sat there with our rings in my palm, I allowed my parched essence to again draw him through my deepest roots giving me flexibility, heart, and strength.

A lifetime together is so short, like a stolen kiss as you dance a reel, a flash of recognition before the flow of the dance takes you away to the next thing.  The dance never stops, and sometimes you get lucky enough to share a moment with a beloved who has been with you since the beginning of time, someone who never really leaves you, and will always be back.  The memory of that kiss makes you smile for aeons, and the promise of its return is a secret pleasure that distracts you as you try to pay attention to other things that should seem important and matter not at all.

Michael’s birthday is next week.  He would have been 61.  What better gift than to give him back his immensity, to let him expand beyond the agreement that those rings symbolized. I know some part of him never goes far, that wherever he dances next there will be a smile on his lips. I love him enough to let him go, even though the human woman I am aches to feel his arms around me, to smell him one more time. 

Happy Birthday, sweetie.  Love always. 

When we were impossibly young

And with Michael's second grandchild, Leo Michael Breyman

The Divine Divorce

The night of the full super moon I dreamed it was my birthday.  I was being taken to a fancy hotel room to celebrate by a big and powerful man.  He and I were not lovers, but I was craving intimacy with him.  He kept telling me what a nice room it was, though I found it to be very ordinary and dull.  At just the moment we were going to connect in some way, I saw him do something so familiar and sad it made my teeth ache: I saw him decide to disappoint me.  I could see that he hated himself for it, and I could also see that he thought he was doing me a favor, saving me from further grief by showing me that he was utterly incapable of love.  Just before I woke up I was wondering, “Why can’t I just leave?” 

It wasn’t that he didn’t love me.  He was just broken.  Not wounded, not some injured and vulnerable being waiting for my ministrations to bring him back to life.  It was not about my being good enough, beautiful enough, woman enough, strong enough, healer enough.  He just didn’t have the parts to put back together.  Something was missing and something would always be missing.

Upon waking I realized, this relationship doesn’t work.  It never has.  It never will.  My inner masculine is a bum. 

All the years of rage and disappointment, all the struggle and effort to make him something other than what he was – what I knew he was because I created him – all that waste and shame led to this simple realization.  What if I just let it be true?  What if I listen, finally listen to the truth that’s been playing itself out over and over my whole life? 

It has taken me a few days to digest this, to let my tired and toughened tissues absorb the bitter medicine of this truth.  The masculine I have built in myself based on the parts I had available to me is never going to provide for me, make me happy, or keep me safe.  And unlike a real human being, he is incapable of change, a static construct based on subterranean beliefs about myself, judgments that I am not worthy of love or forgiveness.  He is a cage built by my ego to keep me hating myself and out of love with life.  I have always had the key. 

            So at this solstice time of year when the sun is strong and I think I am supposed to be celebrating the divine wedding, the marriage of my animus and anima, the union of the opposites at the root of all creation, I am filing for divorce.  The sad monster I’ve sewn together from all my collected failures will finally get to rest, no longer electrified into being by my fears and desires.  If I let him die, something unbuilt will be able to take his place. 

I don’t know what happens next.