This year I am thinking about embroidery floss and walnut ink.  I am trying to slide into the right notes.  I am making new habits to break.

Last night in my dream my mother had become small, the size of a large baby.  Her limbs were curled in and her body hunched so it resembled a beetle.  She was being kept in a little shack on a stone pier.  My sister and I took turns holding her, comforting her. The young women taking care of her and the inventory in the shack tried to get me to initial things in metallic markers:  a crate of antique toys in gold, a bag of yarn in copper.  I refused.

My sister looked at me and said "I don't want to be here."  I said the same to her.  Then our car, parked on the stone pier, decided it didn't want to be there either, and it rolled into the water.

I spent the rest of my dream battling with water, trying to release a cardboard box of snakes and small mammals which had been buried on a crowded beach.

I woke up exhausted.

 This morning walking to get the car there is grey everywhere: the streets, the sky, everywhere.   A woman walked toward me.  As she got closer I could see my name tattooed across her chest. 

I know my mother is alive because this morning the nurse called my house accidentally but once or twice a week I dream she has died and I wake with some phantom pain.

Everything is heartbreak today.  The woman with the car doors open.  The empty recycling bin. 

There is a space somewhere under my rib cage.  It is weary, aching, like a waiting room.

 I lit a candle. Ate an orange. Wrote a poem on the wall.

Still it sits, still, that hollow, dreading being filled.

I used to have ideas.  I remember having them.  Thinking things, then putting them into words.   Ideas that weren't connected to the people in front of me or the dishes or city politics.  Ideas that came from other ideas or the sky or books or the way two shades of blue looked next to an empty box.

I told a lie yesterday.  That losing my wallet was more of a hassle than having my identity stolen.  The old lady at the party smiled at me because she had just lost her purse or it had been stolen and she was deep into getting everything sorted out.  But I don't worry at all when I lose my wallet.  And when my identity was stolen I thought about who I was and how little it had to do with my finances.  And how much it did.  And when all your money goes away it hardly matters where it goes. 

My uncle Bernie's paintbrushes.  A bobbin of yellow merino. A Moominpappa figurine.

I am dusting frames.  I am sorting change. I am drinking too much coffee because I don't have your address.

It's hard, these days, to find a thing to say.  I mean to find a thing to say that someone might say something back to.  It's hard to have someone say something back.  It is all too much.

Last night there were six drummers waiting to play.  They each had their own style.  One a little more uptight, another had jazzy flick of the wrist.  One played earnestly.  One without a care in the world.  I was happy listening to each of them.

Today at the kitchen table we talked about words and poets and people.  The sun was shining through the dirty window behind him.  That window is my window, I thought.  I am a housewife with dirty windows.  I should clean that window, I thought.  I know I won't.

I don't know what makes better words or better drummers or better poets or better people.  I know what makes a window dirty.  It is dirt on the window.

Trying for the life of me to think of some words that ring true.

Try these on, I say. 

I won't wear these to school, she says. 

The past week she has been tucking her long blond hair up under a cap and going to school as the new boy.  She wears hand-me-downs from her cousins and pants from her brother's drawer.  She calls herself Robert.

I know, I say.  I didn't get them for you to wear to school. 

She expected a fight.  I'm not fighting.  I unzip the brown leather boot and hold it out to her.  She pulls the boot on and looks at me.  I am not wearing these to school.

I got them for running with your bow and arrow, I say.  Boots on, she leaves the room. 

Hours later she is running through the living room, bow slung across her chest, long hair behind her, pink pants tucked into her brown leather boots.  She is singing at the top of her lungs.  I don't know what she is calling herself now.

Today's snow unshoveled on the walk.  Blankets hung in the windows.  So much is going undone that eating leftovers feels productive.

Two aisles in and I find myself sad in Market Basket.  I can't even make myself smile at the old people so I try not to make eye contact.  Not even with the white-haired woman who lived with Danuta.  I decide to skip much of the store.  Get what we need for lunches and dinner.  Look toward the end of the aisle.  By frozen foods I am nearly crying.

I end up in the wrong check out lane.  The woman ringing in my food smiles and jokes.  I make a smile back at her.  The boy bagging can't look up and can't start until he has all the food in front of him.  He changes his mind about where the spinach goes.  Lines the soda water up so the labels face the same way.  I want to be home.  The air outside is cold and full of memories.  I want to be home where no one will talk to me.  Where no one will remember him to me.

Outside, groceries in  the back of the truck and the door won't close.  Broken maybe from the cold or maybe from being old and tired.  I drive home with one hand clutching the wheel, the other holding the door shut.  On right turns it opens a crack and the alarm sounds until I can pull it closed again.  On left turns I ease my grip.  I make it through two rotaries, past a police officer and home.

One is the song stuck in my head.
Two are the children up in their beds.
Three is the ache that won't go away.
Four are the bills still left to pay.
Five are the points on the morning star.
Six are the strings on my old guitar.
Seven is loneliness.  Always.  Again.
Eight is the turnaround.  Turnaround then
Nine is the steps walking back to the start
Ten it is over and time to part.

All of a sudden the night isn't young. 
I forgo all that is left undone--
the cleaning, responding, the bills and the work
so that years from now my daughter
will remember me playing the fiddle
downstairs while she was falling asleep.

Rainy Sunday, warm and wet.  Yesterday's snow is all but gone.  All around town people are readying themselves for tomorrow's routine.  The market full of mothers buying food for lunches.  Lines of cars at gas stations.  All of us quickening.

It is nearly midnight.  The kids have been in bed for four hours and still aren't asleep.  They are fighting the end of the break tooth and nail, eyes wide open and bodies tense.

I wish I had a picture of them sitting on the floor, sketchbooks in hand.  The ladies in their fine museum clothes stepped around them.  The men with canes spoke over them.  Children love mobiles, they said.  They love the way they move. 

The children don't hear them.  They draw carefully, intently, copying the ribs of Calder's creatures, capturing the movement with light, feathery lines. 

The cats are curled up on the radiator.  The kitchen floor still needs to be mopped.  My feet are tired and my back is tired but my eyes are wide open.  For the moment everything is quiet and I am happy being quiet.

I dreamed about my mother last night.

I dreamed about my mother last night.  This happens when I haven’t seen her for a while.   If I were a different person I would call it a visitation.  That’s what it felt like: a visit.  She wasn’t well but she was better, like the her of a few years ago.   She knew who I was.  We walked through roads around the water.  She smiled at me.  We said some words,  not many.  There weren’t many to say.   We were together, smiling in the sunlight, finding comfort in each other’s company.

But this isn’t how it was a few years ago.   This is the part I sometimes put out of my mind.  Her running from me, hitting me, biting me, calling me names.  Screaming at the top of her lungs.  Me sitting around the corner, out of her sight, so she wouldn’t see me and turn to rage.

Thursday at the Farmer’s Market one of the women who takes care of my mother held a picture of her in my face.  She told me she was doing better, gaining weight.  She was guiltmongering.  Like she knew the story.  Like she knew who my mother was.

Today my mother turns 64.   There is a party with loud nurses and children and neighbors with flowers.   Balloons and slices of ham.  A bottle of port.  

They poke her and tell her to smile.  Ask her if she is awake.  Feed her sliced ham.  I take her inside.  We are quiet.
 
The man who lives in the house I grew up in comes with his guitar.  He sings for her.  He sings songs everyone wants to sing in a way no-one can sing along.   Songs about mountains.  Songs about trains.  Will you still need me.  Will you still feed me.   She leans against me as he plays.  She keeps her eyes closed.  I hold a glass of port in my right hand, her hand in the other.

The man finishes his songs.  The people start to leave with their loud goodbyes and their loud affections.  I hold her and sing her a song as everyone turns away.  She wraps her legs around mine and curls into me when I sing.  It's by the the hardest thing.  Follow me.  I tell her I love her and leave.

The grass along the extension is purply-red.  There are beans in my mother's pot.  Yellow finches in the sunflowers.  This summer will end if we wait it out.

Don't think twice.  It's alright.

Sunday afternoon, back aching from coughing all night.  Shoulders sore, body tired.  If I had television I could watch football all day and nobody would think ill of me.  Instead I wander around the house trying to find something small to do. 

Make soup.  Knit limes.  It may be all  I can muster.

Monday morning coming down:  bills paid, laundry in, broth on.  Trying to catch up.  Calls that need to be made: doctor, dentist, electric, gas.  Food in the fridge needs to be cooked.  Vegetables to be dealt with.  Green tomatoes to gather.

Last night I dreamt I was going through my mother's possessions with my sister.  Sorting through boxes to find the things that mattered.  An ironstone cup.  A scrap of fabric from a child's dress.  This morning I woke up exhausted.

Today I have lists of things to do.  None of them seem to matter.  Everything I finish leaves me with a feeling of loss.