Mirrors

My daughter loves to watch herself in the mirror. Sometimes, when she cries, she forgets all about whatever injustice she has endured and runs to the mirror to watch the tears run down her cheeks. She dips her tongue in them dramatically as they approach her mouth. Or, if she hasn't made it to a mirror, she hangs her head so they fall to the couch or the blanket, then touches the small puddle, admiring her work.

She always loved the mirror, but became intimate with it in the car. She has one of those mirrors that attach to the back of the seat in front of her. I have seen her talking, practicing expressions, admiring angles, singing, and, of course, watching herself as she cries. She used try to include me, but since the moped accident, and the time I had to slam my brakes on a little too hard to avoid crashing the rental van, when she sees me watching her in the mirror she will say, "Mommy, you better keep your eyes on the road so you don't crash." "The moped crashed into me!" I say, but she doesn't hear it.

Anyway, I still steal glances in the rear-view mirror and, like every woman, steal glances at myself. I am struck that my glances are not as admiring as hers. Now and again I might think, "I look pretty good." Most of the time, though, I"m wondering if I'm getting jowels yet, or how my eyebrows are getting lower, or the crows feet more pronounced. I'm irritated by the sudden wrinkling around my upper lip, which I avoided, despite heavy smoking into my thirties, for so long. If injections didn't look so painful, and weren't so pointless, I might endure them.

But I find myself wondering when it starts, if there is any way to avoid it, and know there is not. I watch Kaikea admire how her purple leopard leggings go with her red poka-dotted doggie shirt. She doesn't wonder if her butt looks good in them. She watches the hair fall into her face and declares with glee "I have enough hair for the ladybug barrettes!" She doesn't think it is too fine, or too dark, or too blonde, or that her haircut doesn't flatter her face. Perhaps she will find a way to cherish those feelings as they pass across her beautiful face, flashing in the mirror, the tattoos of girlhood--envy, invalidation, heartache, longing--and admire her work.

Changes on the Street

So the liar is gone. It's a relief, but also the street is a bit colorless without the villain. No one to gossip about shamelessly, no one to feel slightly better than, or slightly less than, depending on the moment. Only me against me.

I don't look like a girl in this....

"I don't look like a girl in this," Kaikea says to me, pulling at her simple white shirt in a near panic. We are late for school and work but I know there is no way to short cut this battle.

"Oh, okay, what do girls wear?" I say, genuinely curious.

"Girls wear happy shirts."

Oh man.

Happy must mean pink and red, polka dots and hearts, doggies, flowers, and most recently fairies. Happy shirts go well with happy skirts, striped, with butterflies, or, most recently, Hello Kitty hearts and letters in red and pink.

This is the new Kaikea, now 3 1/2, whorecently preferred to be naked. Her head, which has always been "the sacred head" as it did not enjoy washing, brushing or ornaments of any kind, has suddenly become a despository for bows and barrettes, which she orchestrates in a very rigid code. Barrettes go at precise places, at precise angles, and, of course, in certain colors. She wants ponytails, but has barely enough hair, and will endure the pain only if they are "flat" ponytails, which I am still trying to totally understand. If any of this goes awry, the sacred head omits a sacred fit out of the sacred mouth.

I am still trying to figure out where she got her ideas of girlhood, when she runs outside in her happy shirt, squeals with happiness as she finds a millipede, lifts it to her lips and kisses it. Balance.

Judgment

"I'm going to kill myself. It's my fault. It's my creation." These are my thoughts as I lie in the dark, imprisoned by the perfect sweetness, the hot weight of my daughter's need, helping her cross the threshold from awakeness to sleep, when all I want to do is rise from this nest and put my fingers to the keys, say something I need to say, be me. Nanny 911 shrills in my head, "you're raising an insecure child!" barked at the dad who insisted his daughter needed him beside her. Who is right? My daughter is afraid of the dark, clings to me, and I am right, she needs me, but she is also a taskmaster. At three and a half she demands, while waiting for the sandman and also the monster under the bed, for me to rub her back, her tummy, her legs, and, tonight, her arms, until she can slip off to dreamland.

I cannot express the sweetness and gift that is the smell of my dauther wrapped against me, cuddling with all her might. And yet I have moments on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Before I had Kaikea, two women spoke deeply to the reality of it all. One had lived on the edge but had great successes, including producing, had a grown son in her 40s and two children at 43 and 45 with a wealthy man. Her advice? "Don't do it! Be yourself, play the guitar, write movies, do what you do, be you, who wouldn't want to be you?" Another, "The women who have the hardest time are older women with masters degrees and other accomplishments, the women who are used to being themselves."

It's not like I was unaware of this argument. In my estimation, which lasted a couple of decades, a woman who wanted a career and motherhood needed to have the career first. I knew that, and I didn't quite have a career, though I had a life. But when people said to me, "your time is over," I honestly though they meant my time for massages, mani/pedis and long indulgences in movies with subtitles. I didn't know they meant in every part of my expression. And I didn't know it would go on and on. I thought I would lose a few month's sleep, not a few years'. And I didn't know that the moments I shared with my beloved daughter would be so excruciatingly precious that I could simultaneously drink in the sweetest moments of my life and want to kill myself so I could write about it, write about life, write about me, sing a song, express...I don't know what it is, I just know that I miss it.

A long time ago a friend asked me why I write. I struggled for answers (uh, to connect to humanity?) until she suggested it was because I couldn't help it. I was living in Austin, home of the aspiring songwriter, married to a songwriter. I saw a lot of songwriters--good, great, awful, mediocre--each as driven as the next, shamelessly, hopelessly. It humbled me greatly, and took off a good deal of pressure, to acknowledge that I just couldn't help it. In my 20s, when I realized I so badly wanted to write, I was wounded and discouraged by the lack of demand from my peers that I MUST put my thoughts down on paper. In my 30s, I worked tenaciously on a novel, short stories, anything, with no result, but a few gentle accolades and some promise. In my 40s, I am so grateful for a moment to put fingers to the keys, I am easier on myself. And yet, impossibly, implausibly, I lie with what I know is the most precious gift on any plane, a child who smells like heaven and who will one day roll her eyes at me and keep all her secrets within her and not know how to say what she means, and I squander this sweet precious moment of complete acceptance and need, with the desire to rise from the sheets and type on this computer these thoughts.

It makes no sense. And yet sometimes my love--for her, especially--and for life, for the ridiculous beauty around me that the judges on American Idol might make into a trite backrop, "The whale are nice, but do you always have to use them as a backdrop?" the turtles, the dolphins, the turquoise ocean, the snowcapped mountains, the spirit of Pele, even before I had all these eruptive forces to inspire me--somehow it really is this love that drives me to the computer because I am bursting with the need to "share." And then I arrive, and I am still too tired to say much of anything, but only know that I have crossed some threshold myself, even without someone rubbing my back, my arms, and my tummy, just for being here. Perhaps that is something I can hope my daughter finds for her own.

Perspective

Irony. The mountain of a man who was posting crazy numbers and lying like a rug on the timeshare tours has been in a moped accident. Last I heard was having his spleen removed. I wish him godspeed and am grateful I did not hit him.

Today a young man Sam has known his whole adult life is an the hospital, perhaps dying of lung cancer. He is 38. He has had mysterious symptoms. He cannot be moved to a hospital with experts. I saw him two weeks ago, bodysurfing and calling a surf contest at Banyans. He has the energy of Prometheus, gabbing, creating, bullshitting, energizing. It is unfathomable. Sam went tonight to visit him. And just called to say, as he is waiting, that another friend, the father of a close friend, a health nut, a jeweler, a waterman, has lost scary weight and is going by ambulance tonight to the hospital. He got married on Valentine's Day to a young woman, his daughter-in-law's cousin. He has been making, if I am to believe certain hints, my engagement ring.

I am home safe with our daughter, who is watching Cinderella. I never thought I would show her this, the whole Cinderella syndrome as it is, but she likes the animals. And it seems she will be slender and pretty, so I suppose it will not be destroying her self-worth, only warping her expectations on relationships. Luckily, she gets bored at the prince part.

We are wondering if she will play basketball. She is exhibiting a peculiar passion and talent for dribbling. Even a teacher at her preschool--not her own teacher--approached me today to comment on her amazing talent at dribbling, a very complex activity for a 3-year-old. At 2 1/2, our friend Maria, a high school basketball star, marveled as Kaikea sank basket after basket. Who knows? Sam has elite-level athleticism. I am not ungraceful, but it wouldn't come from me. Her great grandmother, my mother's mother, was a star athlete. So odd to watch what might come. My greatest prayer, or course, that she has the long life to see what she can be.

Thin Red Line

Is it a bad sign that I can't wait to wake up tomorrow because at 8AM I can go get some Xanax?

I am losing it. And I am surprised.

I recognize that I have not dealt with some of the crushing losses others have dealt with. But I have had pain. My parents divorced, my dad remarried, I wanted them to reunite until well until my 20s, though I never admitted it. I almost married a man who made me feel small, then beat me badly. I almost went back to him. I fell in love again, I got a divorce, I lost a stepsister I loved to drugs and depression. I have watched my brother, who I love as much as my breath, suffer many blows, lost grandparents I adored and nearly lost my mother, twice. I have done bankruptcy, been jilted, almost lost the love of my life to drugs and the court system, endured pregnancy alone. So although I have escaped many tragedies, I have lived.

But I am losing it. I think it's the accident, and I can't put a finger on it. It doesn't help that I am working a job that tests me spiritually in a way I find hard to respect, butI do. It doesn't help that I often fail, and that I might get fired for it, and I have never been fired. More than the wages, I would miss the healthcare. I would miss Dr. Barville, who will talk to me on the phone and issue me Xanax because it is sensible to do so, because I am experiencing shortness of breath and tightness in my diaphragm and crying uncontrollably. I yelled at my daughter tonight, screamed at her, because she screamed at me. I went and hid in the car and only came out when I realized she was still screaming for mommy. What do you say? "I'm sorry, honey, mommy is a little overwhelmed right now, but Mommy loves you. I respect that you're upset, but perhaps you could express it in a way that is less confrontational." She looks at me and almost understands. "Please honey, I love you no matter what, but you can be upset with mommy without yelling at me." I don't know. You want the little critter to know you love her no matter what, and get to show her feelings, but you can only take so many tantrums. Or I can. God how I remember my parents laughing at me and how infuriated it would make me. Now sometimes I can't help it, Sam and I can't help it. The level of fury over not being to take a rattle into the bathtub strikes you as funny sometimes, when you are weighing major lawsuits, job losses and general paranoia.

And now my friend Liz has had a baby! Oh, the things I've said to Liz, who is a woman with a career, and love, and everything, and she will be fabulous, and tested to the extreme. And she better not find it easy or we won't be able to be friends. Oh, the love, and the torture. So much more than exquisite.

And I would pine on by Kaikea is asleep and Sex and the City is on and I need to nestle into this life right now. I did yoga tonight, the first time in 3 years, and it helped, for 50 minutes. Then I cried more and had wine. Which helped, for an hour. Now I have the Girls and Excedrin PM to see me through the end of the night. Tomorrow, woo-hoo, Xanax!

44

So I have made myself get out of bed to write a few words tonight, partly because Susan said there better be plenty to read when she gets here, and partly because I really do need to feel like a writer. I started two other entries in the last few days, one about my pre-birthday trip to Kohala which meandered in a big yawn about the bus trip to the ranch with pigs and what not but mostly mused about the time I spent with Kaikea asleep on my lap, full moon over the volcano, listening to the glorious and short-lived Iz, the only Hawaiian musician, I learned from our helpful driver, to be laid in state in Honolulu. Just to think deep thoughts in the quiet was birthday present enough. And it was good I got it then, as the the birthday itself was a piece or two of happiness, then the shock of colliding with a moped, the subject of my other abandoned post. Details asdie, which house within them nightmarish possibilities, I have never seen a man lying in the road near consciousness, especially one who has recently bounced off my car. It was shocking and numbing and something I preferred, at the time, to be someone else's problem. He is alive, and I kept telling myself that was the birthday gift, though I am ashamed that I was immediately filled with petty thoughts like, "I hope they realize it was his fault and I hope his insurance covers this." I think I have decided I am not wholly heartless, but just went out of body, like it was happening to someone else. Sam was there on the phone with 911. People stopped all over. A nurse came. Then police, ambulance, it all seemed very fast. I realized I was shaken when I handed the cop my debit card and didnt' understand what he was saying to me when he said he still needed my license. For some reason, I had the registration to my old car, which he also didn't find useful. And my insurance card was soggy and wet. I'm not quite sure how it got that way. I went over to tell the man, Harry, that I was sorry, and he muttered thank you as he was being lifted into the ambulance. I'd like to take credit for this nice gesture, but it was Sam who urged me to do it. The truth is I was mostly numb, and what I did feel was more like stress and irritation. I had been on a mission to look at a house to rent, and I just wanted to see the house. After I saw the house, I called the number the police had given me and spoke to his wife. They were in good spirits, and he had a broken foot and maybe hand. She was relieved, I think her exact words were "refreshed" that I called. He was a tough guy, and the kids were joking that they hoped my car was okay. They come from Vermont, and they know what happens when you hit a moose. I was desperate to hear he was okay, but nothing else connected.

For the record, here is what happened. There is one road to south Kona, where many of the locals live, as it is cheaper down there. It's a two-lane road, and at rush hour, the southbound traffic is stop and go. I was heading north, against traffic, needing to turn left. The Big Island is a friendly place. No one has taken those Defensive Driving courses that tell you to never wave people on. A big truck saw me trying to turn left, stopped, and flashed his lights for me to go. I later learned he is the "controller of the lane" in insurance terms. I turned left, and as I crossed the shoulder, a moped slammed into me. He had not stopped with traffic, as mopeds and motorcycles will often do. He just flew on past. I never saw him. My passenger, a world-class back seat driver who points out coconuts that might fall on me 800 feet away, didn't see him until he hit the car. He was going fast. But it is hard to defend. It's hard to feel in the right when you have sent someone to the hospital, and I am desperate to be believed and defended. I am angry, and I have reason to be.

It turns out that "mopeds," in this case a 100-pound machine with a 200-pound man--on measure of a moose with velocity behind him--that popped my tire, destroyed a side panel and bumper and could have killed my daughter had he hit me further back, are "pedestrians." They don't carry insurance. So the gift, that he is alive, is profound, but the $500 it will cost me to fix my car at a time when groceries are a strain does not seem quite as profound. It gets worse, but I won't dwell on it. Alas. It is of the times.

More than anything, more than the money, is the shake it has given me. I treasure my fearlessness, it keeps me young, and yet I have had little reason to fear in my life. My sister died in a car accident, and that shook me, though it seemed inevitable, as she took so many chances in her long battle with addiction and mental illness. Even so, I realize how irrational and incomplete the grieving process is, and how little understanding we can actually cultivate. I have thought since of when my father was on a jet that plummeted 6000 feet above the Bay Area and everyone on it thought they would die, he experienced no later fear of flying. He would break into a sweat, however, driving over a bridge, riding an elevator, or riding in the back seat. My point is that everything is delayed, stuffed, moved, rewired, in ways we can't understand.To have an accident be so unearned, while I was driving so carefully, completely unimpaired, has jarred my faith and sense of security. Mine is a new age type of faith, the belief that if I feel I'm blessed I am blessed, and yet I am always secretly aware that I have been untested, and scared that the universe might hear me think that, and truly test me. It takes me to the worst of fears, the ones I can't put into words, like losing Kaikea, then takes me to the sorrows I know I must face and have not, like losing my parents. Or the sorrows we may all face if war should come to us, and then reminds me of all the loss, all around, from celebrities to neighbors. I have a very fucked up strange sense of justice, faith and life. It is a hodgepodge of too many religions, no religions, having born witness to events so greatly magical they defy any other explanation except to feel, at least in that moment, that I was chosen for something profound. And then of course that goes to the weight I feel when my life seems so much less than whatever great path I must have been destined for. And to the idea that a profound life doesn't have to look profound, though I suffer from as much of the rock star jones as anyone else in my generation. As much as I would like to think an ordinary life is extraordinary, I secretly feel that is a bunch of crap. And yet I know that wildly successful people who live their dreams have great tragedies and often turn out to be mean deluded motherfuckers.

I feel like cussing because I don't get to do it at home anymore. I cut way back a long time ago, and have listened while Sam sprinkled his stories with the f word and wondering when it would happen, and it did. Kaikea gleefully shouting "fuck!" over and over again, as often as she could. I handed that one over to Sam, and felt great relief at deciding to ignore the problem altogether. I enjoyed listening to him try to explain why we don't say it, and have tried hard to keep a straight face as she tests out whether we really do get to say it. Wisely, we have managed to ignore it. A week or so has passed and she seems to be moving on. Her current obsession is wanting to know what letter everything, and I mean everything stands for. It's a great opportunity for us to practice spelling and vocabulary.

So back to faith, and courage, and fearlessness, and fears manifesting where you least expect them. Like the fact that I could not get into the water, and had no desire. Sam pushed me to go, in the way he does, not quite handing me the surfboard but repeating how much I need it, which means I know he is desperate for me to be restored. I went out when it was windy and blown, rare here, and I thought very small, but it was bigger than I thought. Not big, just headhigh on the sets, but everything looks different when the water is dark and the peaks are blown. How quickly I have adjusted to being able to see the water, and know what it will do, as reef breaks do. But I surfed Banyans, which has rock clusters everywhere, and disoriented as I was feeling, I couldn't remember where they were. I cussed him the first time a set came in, and I was ducking and rolling, not quite sure where reef shelf was, the black jagged rock that slices and dices. Then I made it over that set. Nothing pretty on the waves, caught a couple, and it was probably the third set I survived where I started to feel like me, where the fear started to drain just a little, not of surfing, but of life.

When I came out, I was better. A lot better. Though I am struggling still. All around me, worlds are coming down. I have to keep believing they are being reshaped, sandcastles being rebuilt is all, in newer more eco-friendly configurations. Or perhaps it is more like lava. If that is the case, only Pele, only that kind of heat, can reshape them.