On life before giving birth...

Awakening this morning through exhaustion to the word “Mami” from a desperate little cry in the darkness in the other room. I move my mammoth body over creeks and cracks on the wood floor and somehow manage to crawl into her toddler bed and snuggle next to her warm little body. “Mami, I wanted you,” she says as she reaches and then strokes my bare arm, as she did when she was a baby and nursing. I can appreciate the comfort I can give her, grateful for the magic of that small gift. It is easy to slip into frustration over her high demands for intimacy, connection, comfort around the clock – sleep deprivation is the worst kind of torture but as I lie there holding my two year old close to my forty week pregnant body the power of our union illuminates my soul with nothing but tenderness. Her sibling is inside of me, sleeping, listening, and sometimes fidgeting.

I will give birth again soon.
Will be sent into the throes of an ocean,
thrashing against full moon tides
a violently sublime symphony
against which I have no other armor but
pelvis, muscle, and the innate will to live
and give life or is it death?

Dying from the moment we emerge
birth is our portal, a delicate threshold through
which we pass regardless of style
Where we enter is the unanswerable question -
life or the after life? Frightened as I am to enter
the tumultuous water, I dream of the calm…

To hold this new air breathing
life in my hands, press its tiny supple
body against my chest and nurture it into another
Two, three and more year old
With my mother’s milk, intelligence and love.
A desire so great, that the “what ifs” are worth it, the
fiery possibilities at which I cower diminished by
the soft breeze of life-infused potential that makes me soar...

De Cabeza

There is a mystery growing between my ribs and my pubic bone
Soft shell of a child unfurls itself right side up
Or is it upside down – its position consumes me
It is the third coming of a child into the cloud
Like tangle of our lives

There is a happiness that the mystery demands
As I pull the dagger of trauma out of
The wounded womb it calls home
It releases a hazel smoke of worry and love
and fills my blossoming barrel with my scrawny faith

There is a shawl of laughter and music that now drifts about
Our home that only children summons,
rubs itself around my aging shoulders
Falls down in long lashes around my bulbous bodice
Catches the mystery in its inevitable turning
And holds its head near my heart

An Altar for Amaly - Un Suspiro

Amaly Celeste Santos Salazar - May 17,2004 – June 17, 2004

It is a Buddhist belief that it is not the length of time that determines your life but the number of breaths you breathe. Amaly Celeste, my first-born daughter’s life was like one extended breath. Her living outside of my womb was a continuous struggle to breathe and when she finally did breathe on her own, the struggle then was against death. It is the poetry of this breath for which I make an offering of love. It is my own struggle against forgetting, despite time and the natural unfolding of life that threatens to wash her memory away. It is my way of holding her life in my breath, of creating a space for her return.

May for My Daughters: Amaly and Avelina

It is May again,
when blue blemishes of sky fold over the rain
buds bloom at the seams, and the
humming bird, el colibri ignites a mixed blessing in its soar

it is May again,
a time synonymous with birthing
the impermanence of our lives pushed up
against a tapestry of memory and pollen, golden green and
red as the color of my living daughter’s eyes
she has just turned one,
my first-born daughter would have been two
om mani peme hung

it is May again,
a time also synonymous with dying
within me burrowed are their little beings still
together in a brew of loss and love
what a triumph to be born, life
emerging from life in a tangle of violence and beauty
but an equal triumph it is to leave breath behind
to surrender to the inescapable will of nature

it will be May again
despite winter’s forced hibernations
or the dander of dandelions wilted in the sun
when el colibri will come to my window to drink
from the blossoms of fuchsia and the laughter of a
little girl will echo in our garden, growing
it will be, one day in May


Note: This poem was written last year pre-blog but I thought it appropriate today...

A Parade of Shoes...

Clac cloc, clac cloc, clac cloc, clac cloc, clac cloc, a rompus echo consumes the day.
She's now on her ninth pair of shoes... strewn and mishappened throughout the house.
Indiscriminate to the strength of their sound or shape, but partial to color and those that sparkle.

I'm uncertain about what the appeal is for her. It is certainly nothing that I nutured with my
own obsession for shoes smothered into thirty-five shoe boxes in the basement. Shoes that
are now four or five years dated. A fashion cemetery for me but for Avelina a wonderous
bounty for parading and clac clocing on our wood floors...

Amidst

Amidst the tapestry of our lives
her little eyes are woven like two
raised birds that flutter in our center

She is sewn into my mother's
condition less affection
though she is her own creation
with an inertia driven by a source
aflame beneath her feet

It is her own beautiful struggle
to exist in joy in spite of
and because of my flaws

... her breath is as essential
to me as my own

Jennifer

The email below is from my friend Jennifer, who like me lost her first-born daughter. Her daughter, Olivia died three months after Amaly due to similiar brain trauma. Both of us used the same midwife. Also like me, her second born was a daughter, Evelyn. Our living daughters now play together....

"Aida--
A moment to share with you . . .
Today I was nursing Evelyn to sleep for her morning nap and soaking it all in. Her soft cotton pajamed body, her wisps of blonde hair curling ever so slightly, her little hand holding my shirt as she nursed and drifted into slumber. The little feet pressing into my belly, kneading like a kitten. Those kicks drive me nuts sometimes but today I cherished the kittenness of it, wanting to soak it all up and hold on forever. I got so sad knowing these moments will pass that this profound intimacy will become a blur of told and re-told stories and some snapshots. Will I remember her smile with just 4 teeth and the way she holds her mouth a squew so they look crooked? The pride that radiates from her face when she rolls into a crawl? How those little feet feel kneading against my now soft belly? I know losing Olivia makes my drive to hold on so deep, my fear of separation so vast. I just watched her sleep and i cried for this day melting into the 11 months that have already passed. I hear Lisa outside pulling in her trash cans. I know she grieves deeply this week, the anniversary of her 17 year old son's death. How could she have him that long, love him, nurse him, hold his hand, send him to school and on a first date and still lose him? How do we survive knowing this is possible? Then I went to your blog and found just what I needed--you standing in and writing from that space we share, the same and different. Being able to come to to you there is so comforting. I know your book will be that place for many to come to know that we are not alone. Thank you.
love you, Jen"

Daffodils in our hair

The daffodils have bloomed! Last October, as the scorpions' birthdays approached, I took my little girl and sat with her in mounds of dirt, carefully spacing nearly 300 bulbs a few inches from the next all across our garden. We looked like two wild banshees - tisnadas from head to toe with bright red noses from the cold. We planted hyacinths, tulips, irises, crocuses and daffodils. Now they are here giving us their momentary joy.

Last year, on Valentine's day, I put a daffodil in Avelina's hair. She was just learning to stand on her own and she was so proud to be outside, holding onto a pot. This year, on Valentines day, I put a new daffodil in Avelina's hair. This time she was running from plant to plant curious bout whether or not daffodils had scent. She learned the word for the white and yellow flower and screams their name each time we pass them on the street. "Daffodiows Mima!"

There is something spectacular about bulbs- the way they store their energy beneath the earth and by some compelling source emerge year after year and bloom in an orchestra of color only to live a few short weeks and begin the cylce all over again. Perhaps I am connected to them because the process is like giving birth and losing your child in infancy and then giving birth again.

Perhaps there is nothing magical to it all - but simply a microcosim of the way life is.

While she laughs...

jibberish jangles out of her mouth
like a wrist-full of bracelets
in a code of which I am
the only decipherer
her little language
pops, sings, pauses and moves
through the air around the
garden of our lives as it grows and
lifts its swallowed syllables
to my opened and delighted ears

I am in love con su cancion...

Her Dress

I found a tiny dress in my closet today. It had been covered by a white plastic bag and was burried between a coat I wore during pregnancy and one I had outgrown then. A woman who owns a bed and breakfast in Colorodo made it by hand. She makes tiny dresses and bonnets for children at her local NICU - dresses and bonnets in which the babies are sometimes burried. When Amaly was dying, our friend, Nancy, the carnio sacral therapist who was helping Amaly had it made for her. The little dress resembles one a child might be christened in, with its glistening white cotton and slight touches of lace and pink ribbon. Today as I pulled back the bag and saw it with the eyes of mourning only two and a half years old, the dress made me see once again...

Amaly's whitering body floating
in the dress, a well of
joy fighting to take its
place amidst our misery
as we played dress up
and for this fragment of time
she was royalty - a small princess
that reigned our lives with
love's iron rule
of endurance
where we were an entire pueblo
of loyal subjects scrambling
to please her whims
her eyes sparkled in the play of
of the moment
I could not bring myself
to take a picture of her that way
I felt guilty for playing and
feeling such happiness
I simply took it off
tucked our fleeting joy into a bag
with the hope John had given me
that another living child
might wear it again
and resumed to marvel
at my daughter Amaly's beauty
dressed in the dignity of death

Sleep

She had her first nightmare just now. Perhaps not her first nightmare, but the first she could articulate. I heard a scream that fully awakened my mother's alarm. "Mima, atutes peto." In other words, "Mima me asusto un perro." I brought her to our bed where she could not find her sleep until she was nestled beneath her father's armpit. There they lay. Both of them, likely unlikelys - her for being here despite our grief over losing Amaly, and him for fathering at 50. Is it trite to think of things in terms of destiny? They share the same face, the same color. They are what fill my life with the sentiments of humanity - cariño, dolor, comprension, angustia, amor. Each walking through the circle of their sleep and inhabiting mine, where we are connected, engaged, and then distanced. I do not know what he dreams. He himself, rarely remembers except for when he dreams of playing basketball again. I know that she giggles often and kicks as if she is running. And now I know that a dog was attacking her. I am unable to really dream since she was born. Her frequent night wakenings have nearly driven me mad. I was told that when the mnd/body cannot enter REM sleep it goes into a psychosis. For now, they are sleeping and I am writing - a kind of dreamlike bliss for me one way or another.

Fuzz

Her favorite fuzzy things - Max, Gismonti, Papi's beard (not shown) and Titi Manenena's monstruo slippers...

Waiting for the light...

She is not afraid of the dark
though I am a coward at it still
her footsteps trek the twenty feet
from her room to ours with the
diligence of a water fall
and arrives at our bed,
whispers "Mima"
this is enough for my sleeping
arms to swoop her into
the folds of our one heated mass
where I place her between
the giant of a man and her
little mother's breasts

She will nurse in the dark
we will say nothing in the
absence of light
I swallow my fears as I look
at the blackness in my mind
then, I am able to see that
she trusts in the night
to take our sleep to
the doorstep of the
universe where we will
knock and will wait
for someone to turn
on the porch light
and open the door

On nursing (a.k.a. "Tuti")

She had only breathed air for three minutes when she attached herself to my breast in the marvel of survival. I watched her motions carefuly amazed at the mysteriousness of her little body filling my arms in small pellets of light. All I could say was "mi corazon, mi corazon" as I held her and watched the face of her ancestors materialize. Hard to believe that I have given her sustenance and love this way for a year and a half.

Tonight at bedtime, she asks for "Tuti" (a derrivative of "Chi Chi") and looks at me with a smile and lifted brows. She knows how to charm sweet milk into her mouth. There is no difference between what I have given and what she has gained. The ying yang swishes about in the wholeness of our union. There have been moments that I despised nursing when her demand was so high and I was in an absolute hysteria because I was fraile and malnurished. She drank with impatience and authority with no mind to my withering. Other times, I stare at her ancient face and I quietly let all of my hopes fall into her suckling like one sees a pitcher fill a glass. These are the times when the hormones send us off to sleep and we fly into a magenta sky and witness the majesty of living. She is alive and nursing and sleeping. I am alive and giving, mothering and yes, loving. We are alive and flying. Dreaming. Breathing. Surviving.

A Spanglish dictionary of Ave-speak.

A - abi!- as in to open or abrir
B - Biba - as in Pipa which is Papi flipped
C - toton - as in corazon
Ch - chaves - as in Cesar Chaves
D - dume - as in give me or da me
E - petetante - as in elefante
F- ores - as in flores
G - tatito - as in gatito which is also "mo"
H - oya - as in hola or hello
I - uno - she reads all I's as the number one
J - yadin - as in garden or jardin
K - talo - as in "frita talo" or frida kahlo
L - yeon - as in leon or graaar!
LL - llaves - she's got the "ye" sound down
M - Mima - as in Mami, now only said under distress
N - niz - as in nariz or "nena nose"
O - opeta - as in opera que "tanta andres poteti" canta Andrea Bocelli, ooooaaaa!
P - Potato - as in Potato the legendary percussionist
Q - tatatilla - as in quesadilla filled with "tetito" as in quesito!
R - jyojyo - as in rojo, red
S - tatos-nanan- as in Santos-Salazar, she can't begin, only can finish with "ssss"
T - topeta - as in trumpet or trompeta followed by a big pucker
U - uno - if read, as in I, if spoken, as in the beginning of counting
V - vites- as in vistes or did you see?
W - wawa - el "o-o-u" or doble u is easy to say as in camion or bus
X - etis - as in exis or x
Y - Yeya - as in maternal abuelita con "bozo" rebozo y "sole" pozole
Z - papapos - as in zapatos

Ah the compost...

Ave and I spent the day in the garden. We are waiting for the bulbs to come up from the earth. I was prunning the summer's dead splendor -- the roses, the hydrangea, the oleander, the cannas, the lantana. I am also looking for a place to bury the placentas that fed my two children. Avelina wore her green water boots that grandma dot gave her which worked magic to keep those lil' toes dry. She hand watered every plant she could reach using a little pot that came in her dish set. Amidst prunning and watering and waiting for the green tops of the bulbs to peak out of the dirt, I came upon the compost. Ah the compost, the sorry little corner of the garden whose walls have come down in neglect, needed some attention. I figured I had done everything right in disposing of my kitchen scraps and leaves there. I had bought a bag full of worms to speed up the process and thought I'd have rich dirt soon. That was four years ago when I first moved in and found this a lot-full of weeds. I'd check on it periodically and saw that nothing was happening until today. I lifted the screen that tops it and saw a small mountain of black rich soil sitting patiently and transformed. There was no trace of leaves or twigs or egg shells. What a miracle - good things take time, like growing a baby and growing dirt. The cycles of life are churning beneath our own feet in spite of and because of neglect. It is clear that even the dead can flourish, if surrendered to the elements.

"Vamos a 'minar." Yes, a caminar...

All of Avelina's fingers wrap tightly around only two of my fingers when we walk. My thumb touches the puffy top of her hand which I stroke so that she feels safe. There is an angel that follows behind. Rememberance. Ave is not concerned that we've just walked through mud or that the road ahead is riddled with rocks and might fold itself into the mountain. She is alive with the present pace,
steps and laughs with
the abandon of her childhood,
looks only at her moving feet
running down the slope
and crashes into my arms

This moment fades only for me.
I follow the trail of my own
worry of letting her go
and I get lost...
tomorrow she will no longer
hold my hand,
and the road would have shrunk,
the laughter would have turned
from right now into yesterday...

I forget that it is quite possible
that she will still carry that
angel on her shoulder
who will remind her of my
caressing thumb holding her safe
while she walks alone into the forest

Missing...

I lost a tooth today. "This is a sacrifice for being a mother," the dentist said. My mom-in-law said she lost a tooth with every child she bore. This is a part of being a mother nobody tells you about along with that you will forever sleep with one eye open. What will I do with a missing molar? I can act as if nothing happened. Denial works in mysterious ways. But there is a hole in my mouth, though not as big as the one in my chest. I've lost a tooth today and last week a friend lost her mother, yet another lost her dog and I am still losing my first-born child. Are they "lost" or are they hovering above their former cavity, persisting only in our thoughts. The space that loss fills feels enormous when something or someone is gone...