immensity

 I'm seeing that my love is a massive infinite individual. Like maybe my thing is not writing after all, writing is the blue collar version of me, my real version is recognizing love, feeling love, giving love, and taking love.

I see it with my mom, I see it with that guy, I see it with my kids, I see it with the one friend at a time I have occasionally. I am much bigger and much less able to control or understand myself and my immense capacity to love. I am huge that way. Huge and airy like the world's biggest soap bubble. I can pop at any minute but so far no way man. I am way too strong to pop.

I have been having trouble because I have wanted to be what I needed to be and haven't been sure how to do it. Everyone else needs something so I'm filling all those roles but there is something else there is this ME in there.

I spend so much time running because it is much bigger than I have the envelope for. I cannot contain it all. I have tried to be Tee ball mom and Van mom and snack mom and beach mom and dog mom and rational mom.

Now I'm dementia mom, and damn I am actually good at that too. I am kindergarten mom. I have this immensity. 

My mom and I are now this other glob of thing, this half person this mongoloid of two. All mixed up. We were always that. She's a broken typewriter and I'm all her keys. I understand her, and I still love her even though she can't love me like she used to. I fill in all the blanks with my huge fucking heart that will not stop. I think I'm scared of myself. I don't want to hurt anybody of course.

But I have needed to feel things so badly.

I don't understand how to love things in a traditional way because love doesn't come at me in a traditional way. Or I reject it so it can't hurt me so I can't be like everyone else doing the same old things but maybe great painters felt this agony, their art blended with life and none of it was good it was just glaring because the art takes on its own life and the artist is all banged up in there and makes a huge mess but this is glory (which I just started watching on tv)

Loving greatly is loving. B is not mad at me for not loving him. He's wanting what we all want, which is the love we deserve to be there and easy to access (hollywood). I hate love because love makes you vulnerable. So I can only love in compartments. I'm afraid I'd be blown apart. Like I was on Halloween all those years ago when I felt like all my love was safe in a family and contained and now I realize it was just me all along. Me seen by b

I Know Nothing

 I'm not going to lose anything.

I always think I'm going to lose everything, I kind of expect it. 

But in the last two months I have taken on a dementia mom, and zoom kindergarten, both with none not even ONE of the skills I needed to accomplish even a TINY portion of these things successfully.

I took them on faith.

I thought well. Well I can try.

The mom needed loving, tending, listening, touch, reassurance. She needed someone outside to keep things safe, and to remember where things were. So she could relax and try and change slowly and quietly back into clouds. While I watch and try not to disintegrate from the immensity of watching your mom change into this horrible sweet and terrible new thing involving so much loss. All made of loss. Loss and I are not friends. We are at opposite sides of the gym. We are rivals. More I am the rival and it is oblivious and cares not one bit how I feel.

I took on this.

Then I got the job with a class I didn't know in a school I didn't know using a technology I don't know while watching a mom I don't know. At the same time.

I said yes.

It's been 31 days not counting weekends.

It is unfolding. It is refolding every day. It is wrinkled. There are some of the same songs everyday. Music is teaching us. I am learning that learning is curiosity and that's all. Not answers. Not at all getting it right or doing anything perfectly.

It's curiosity that is the whole path.

I have let this mom relationship morph into whatever it is. I have some rules and some frustration but there is a whole new relationship here that is mostly baffling, comforting, vulnerable, heartbreaking, full. It is love without words, with all the wrong words because of dementia. It is wordless, labeled wrong. That is good for me, the one who has all the words right all the time, I have the bags of words, I know everything and say it better funnier smarter lovinger than anyone.

I don't know anything. I know less everyday. I learn from 5 year olds that I see on a zoom class while I teach in boxers without a bra in my living room with the dog at my feet.

I learn from my mom who can't function cerebrally, but who is still teaching me that love is all there is. Love, touch, connection, family. 

Say yes even when it seems impossible. Allow loss. Lose everything.  

You won't break. 

That is a Great Shirt

I'm at school in a 1st grade classroom and this is my third different class of the week. The first day was a juvie 5th grade class that has maybe never seen the light inside a flower, or known a freshly baked good, or known the love from hugging someone all clean just out of the shower. This was the kick the ball into the street and then say we have no ball now group. Then I did 3 hours in a preschool class where all their hands felt like the backs of baby deer, and the little boys held hands on the way to the bathroom, and we all dressed up like veterinarians and checked the heartbeats on stuffed animals.

But now, 3rd day, this little 1st grade class where the kids are writing a sentence about the book we read, and drawing a picture. And I'm so tired and it's only like 9 am, and I'm walking around to help "inspire" the ones not doing anything to get to work, and I pass one little person who looks up at me all shiny. "I'm so happy," she whispers, "Because I finally drew my first perfect shirt."

I instantly know this will be the best part of my day. I look at her little drawing and there's a funny little guy and another person, and she's showing me the shirt and it's terrible, she's 6, but I love that moment when you feel like for ONE second you did something right. And she musta been trying for at least TWO YEARS.

That is a great shirt, I tell her. Her eyes are so incredibly gleamy proud I say, I'm gonna draw a star on your paper, for your perfect shirt.

I draw the star lopsided, messily, the best I can and she holds her breath like she's getting a million dollars.

And I'm not even her real teacher, just the fake one. I don't know her name either, she's just one of the faces I meet, in the sea of babies. It made me feel like it doesn't matter, who sees your shirt you made, or if it even is perfect. It's knowing how you feel, and telling someone else about it.