the last blue iris

 For most of my life, I have been obsessed (either consciously, or subconsciously) with being as small as possible. My mother--daughter of a woman the size of a bird--paid particular attention to the bodies of her daughters. It's not that we were encouraged to be beautiful--that was a thing for other people, it seemed, not us--but we were encouraged to be small. I've read about mothers who were on all sorts of fad diets, but that wasn't my mom--our house was full of junk food: doritos and miracle whip and chips ahoy. In fact, if you ask her about healthy foods she'll say they are disgusting. Tofu? gross. Vegetables? not for her. But she says, even now well into her 70s, that she is never hungry. As a child i remember her breakfast being a Marlboro Light and a Pepsi. She chain smoked well into her 70s, after my dad was diagnosed with heart failure and he stopped drinking and smoking, after my dad died at 72, and after she was diagnosed with macular degeneration, glaucoma...

 Tonight, I convinced R and J to walk down to Peacock Lane to see the lights. A little fingernail moon was hanging in the southern sky, and the Big Dipper scooped up a bit of the east.The sidewalks were packed; families, young adults, toddlers, teenagers, women in hijabs and others in miniskirts and so many languages other than English being spoken and two hotdog vendors and men selling ligthed ballons on sticks. I am not a crowd person, but we live nearby and it's a Portland tradition and because three out of the four of us are home, it seemed the thing to do on Christmas Eve. As we walked through Laurelhurst, we saw families sitting around tables eating Christmas Eve dinner, bottles of wine being passed around the table, dinner smells and woodsmoke smells drifting into the night air.  J has been home, in his room, for a week now. It's been a hard term for him and I'm incredibly proud that instead of thinking he had to sit out his anxiety and loneliness in his apartment, ...

 In so many ways I have built the life I have always wanted: I come home to a safe house, my child is content in his life, has a community (stayed out far past midnight at a park watching bats darn the sky near the river with friends); I sing, I am doing theater again, I run--though less than I did. Summer is starting its long, slow lean toward fall. We aren't to the hottest parts yet, but the lawns are all yellow and the light is pink at night and baby orb weavers have begun building webs everwhere. I walk down the stairs with a spider stick each morning, carefully unknotting one end of a web from one side of the stairwell, letting the little orange spider clamber into the rosemary. An  hour later, the web is back. Some are slung twenty, thirty feet above the street between the deodar and the yellow cedars.  In three weeks, R. and I head up the mountain to write. I love that week, our world just river nad tree and scree and words. In less than a week, I need to put down ...

 When J. was young, and I was still teaching, summer was languid--long hot days in our little Moorish apartment or in the house on Grosse Pointe, cicadas and humidity, trips the Lake, long hours we spent simply being with one another, hot and sticky, pointing the hose at the dogs, lying on the basement floor while tornado sirens wailed over the green skies. There were also those nights that J. would be at his father's where I would drink myself into a stupor, sit in my office or the little front porch or at the dining room table watching evening seep up from the reservoir woods, write poems or blog posts, so deeply sad and lonely but also free. Then, I often felt guilty for the few days or hours that J. would be gone and I would be young and free. I went on dates, or spent the night with various boyfriends, went to movies or played poker with H. and D. I knew none of that would be possible if I had J. all the time, but I wished for it desperately. Summer was a stretch where he was ...

I have been trying so hard to write, to think these days. I am so busy. My job doubled in January, quite literally. This is tech week, and then opening night for the opera and I just finished the penultimate chamber choir tour of the year.   It has been one of the most beautiful springs I've experienced in Portland--vacillating between warm and floral scented, and wet and chilly. It has been perfect.  I've dug another pond in the garden, I've gotten a 20 cubic yard chip drop that i've hauled up the 30 steps, 5 gallon bucket by 5 gallon bucket.  I can't sit still, I bake bread and make occasional dinners. R. is working two jobs, 7 days a week, and some nights when we finally fall into bed, it's the first time we've been still together. Two years ago, I was almost as busy--opera and choir and J. graduating from high school and publishing my third book, and then those disastrous months in late summer and fall, where the world fell apart. Then a year ago, I was ...

August A year ago we were in the thick of it. After 10 years of cross-country travel, 24 years of abuse from my ex, one would have thought the first year would have been easy. But how does one prepare for freedom when you've never known it? Last fall was the hardest year of our lives. And yet, I have never seen more clearly my love for my boy, R.'s love for our family, the safe landing we have built here, more clearly. J has asked me not to write about this time, so this is as much as I can say, but here we are on the other side.  Yesterday he and I walked through the Mt. Tabor neighborhood and talked about music and art and life; on Thursday, he heads back to [insert college name here] to begin his sophomore year.  I never thought about being in my late 40s (JFC, even to say that, late 40s , feels weird, ancient and yet I am the youngest I will ever be). I have published three collections of poetry. I sing with (and produce, and am president of the board) an opera company, si...