After more than a year’s hiatus, I am finding my way back to a writing “wholeness”.

I Only Wish to Be Clear 

I don’t want to be a healer

as much as I want to be healed.

Bathing in my own light of peace.

Not that I’m unwilling

to share my story.

A decades long, winding odyssey

of spiritual mishaps and adventures.

Or to listen to your’s

holding it in sacred trust.

I only wish to be clear here.

I’m not interested in balancing your chakras

if mine stay caked with energetic mud.

I’m not interested in sparking your creativity

if mine lies fallow in fear.

I’m not interested in teaching you

how to meditate into loving kindness for yourself

if I still cringe looking in a mirror.

I am not interested in being a “wounded healer”.

Though “Lightworker” has a beautiful ring to it,

like Tibetan bowl music,

that has more than once seduced me away

from my own soulwork

as my ego lapped up labels of

life coach, teacher, best friend, mentor, wise woman.

Kathy MacDonald

My Perfect Day

Our writing group set a challenge to write about our perfect day. Here’s where the prompt brought me. Where would it take you?

My Perfect Day

 

Someday when I’m older

wiser

wizened,

will I understand that they were all perfect days?

With children grown there is only profound and hushed gratitude.

Through the gauzy fabric of time

I see myself

exhausted, but willing,

to wake at two hour intervals to nurse an infant.

Chasing squirmy toddlers in osh kosh b’gosh.

Pushing swings for legs too little to pump.

Reading Charlotte’s Web

James and The Giant Peach

The Indian in the Cupboard

Carving pumpkins and gluing glitter on pinecones.

Displaying school papers covered in stars.

Spending Saturday nights with Indiana Jones,

afternoons with The Little Mermaid.

I know I was often bored and frazzled and so much in need

of adult conversation

that I spent hours on the phone to friends.

If given a second chance, I would take those hours back

and give them all to my children.

Now, I smile to remember

driving to school when he missed the bus

again.

Or when she forgot

her homework

her uniform

her lunch money.

I don’t smile

when I remember cleaning the room

and finding the speeding tickets,

but I say again a thank-you prayer

that I did find them,

and could broach the discusssion

that may or may not have been his wake-up call,

but he is still with us,

safe and less foolish ten years later.

I can’t remember now

a single day that wasn’t perfect

in the way that they are woven one to the other

like a medieval tapestry

with threads both dull and golden….

I see how my mother revisits the years

with my father,

and what was once painful has now softened,

like taking an open can of paint too harsh for the walls

and swirling in white to soften the tint

and bring out its lovliness.

Now he is just Norman once again.

Norman who was handsome in his airforce uniform.

Norman who had an acerbic wit.

Norman who fathered her only daughter.

Now, when only love remains,

they were all perfect days.

I recall my own restless years.

They are like pieces of quartz, agate, jade

turning over and over and over

in the rock tumbler of time’s perspective,

until all the sharp edges that once cut at my heart

are so smooth to the touch

I can hold them to my cheek.

and though I have known sorrows,

many of my own making,

still, in retrospect I cannot choose which stone

I would remove from the tumbler and toss

from the mix if given a magic decree.

I suspect, from my reluctance even now,

I would hold hold onto each for the rest of my breaths,

for each possesses, to me, a strange happiness too,

having once laid claim to it, and called it mine.

Having once embraced it as part of my life.

They are all perfect days,

these days in which I loved, hated,

laughed, cried, raged, lied,

betrayed, nurtured, wrote,

sang, danced, kissed, held,

protected, mothered, appreciated,

ignored,comforted, disappointed,

created, abandoned, re-created ~

for they are the threads I chose and wove and entwined

one to the other,

that say I was alive.

I was here.

These legacy moments in the tapestry of a life

that cannot be replicated, reworked or rewoven,

singular work of art,

mythical story,

mine and mine alone.

I declare it perfect.

And I am suspect of my desire to use

dreaming, creative visualization, and manifesting,

to sweep me away from the very real

and present joy of THIS MOMENT

and THIS LIFE

and tempts me to pick at a seed of discontent

only so that I can make a grand vision and plan

of a brighter future

in which life in a beach house with perfect white cabinets,

a black granite counter top,

a gas log fireplace

and the sound of the sea,

fills up the hollow spaces

of my human longing.

I have come to love my hollow spaces,

the aches that call me back to myself

from the maddening, grueling,

new and improved tomorrow-world

I have been yearning for like a child

waiting, on her birthday,

for Christmas,

which will surely be a better holiday

filled with more presents

less responsibility.

Loved ones who only cooperate.

Lovers who never leave

and children who never grow old.

I want to know now,

before I’m old and wizened.

I want to ask each morning

before I have decided otherwise,

“What is perfect about this day?”

And hear answers whispered

like butterfly kisses into my ear.

“You are here today.

Loving your children,

and the sky,

foliage,

and the smell of dying sugar maple leaves on wooded paths.

You are here.

Still.

Embrace it.”

 

Kathy MacDonald

 

 

 

 

Published!

San Francisco Here He Comes ~ my story about my oldest son leaving home, was chosen, along with 21 others, for the first ebook from the Inspired Living Publishing Women’s Wisdom Series. To all my friends and family, who never thought I would get around to getting my work out there, I offer…..

http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?af=1182312

And to those writers still waiting I say…..it’s never too late! Take your fine work out of the draw, give it a shine, and send it out into the world!

Chrysalis Magic

Is he happy now?  This gemstone of a butterfly, irridescent indigo, flutter floating on the summer breeze?  Does he mind being unrecognizable to his former caterpillar colleagues?  Does he miss inching on tree limbs, crunching through green foliage to fatten flesh needed for fuel?  Fuel to grow wings?  Fuel to fly?  Now, as he is sipping nectar, could he possibly pine for his earthbound days?

As the breeze whispers over his wings, he sings.  As he dips his probiscus into the heart of the fuscia to sip its nectar, he hums.  As his feet dance in the pollen dust of rose petals, he laughs.  What he would have missed, had he refused the call to chrysalis!

But oh, the terror.  He can remember it even now.  The grief of good-bye to the only form he had ever known.  True, he had outgrown his skin four times prior, but the new skin was a familiar uniform in a larger size.  He still looked like a caterpillar, and crawled like a caterpillar.  He liked being a caterpillar, and mourned his imminent death.  Goodbye to his six pair of legs, working in unison, to march him across a branch, towards a meal.  Goodbye to his woolly, scratchy coat, keeping him shielded from the prying fingers of curious children.  How he loved to curl up in a protective ball when threatened by an enemy’s beak.  And the fresh, vegetable taste of leaves, could there be anything better?  The tickle of grass on his belly?  The obstacle course of tree trunk crevices underfoot?  How, how, how could he be asked to give all of this up?

But the day came when no skin could stretch to accommodate his yearnings. Cocoon world sang its song; wove its spell.  “Come, spin, stay, dream.”  The grass began to feel less inviting. “The taste of leaves grows stale”, he thought; and then shoved away the thought as crazy, brash, impulsive.

Yet, yearning never goes away by wishing. As it happens for every caterpillar not crushed under the weight of the world, he must cease dining on the same old appetizers. He must follow the wanderlust that calls him to find a branch, upon which to hang his concerns.  To rest awhile on a button of silk of his own making ~ to hold fast to the button, when the next labor pains compel him to release one clasper at a time, until bottom up, he hangs, swinging in the breeze.

How strange it was, to be between two worlds ~ a resident of neither.  Knowing one was lost to him forever.  Not knowing the shape or form of the new one.  Knowing only that the need to enter the silence, to stay as long as necessary, was the only certainty.

He stayed.  Kept company with himself.  Through all the fears.  “What are these strange limbs I’m growing?”  Through all the nights of grief.  “I changed my mind.  I want to go back.  It was a good enough life.  I can eat leaves all my life, if that’s what it takes to recognize the shape of me.”

Still, the chrsysalis held him fast through the long hours of alone upon alone, so that the truth could seep into the gelatinous mass of what was once his caterpillar body.  Lonliness, he understood, was inescapable, and with that awareness, he did the keening cry of all those who are on the brink of the great discovery.

On the other side of an empty well of tears, a quiet stillness.  A complete surrender to what is ~ not what was or what might be wished for.  Only what is.  A curiosity.  “What is this twitch?  This desire?  This new hint of hope that urges me to break out and be free now?  In this moment?  Is it possible I was born to these wings all along?”  From reluctant exploration to triumphant flight.  An indigo butterfly gives me courage.

The Moon Is Not Constant

I am overly fond of the moon ~

defensive in her honor,

identifying as I do,

with her constant inconstancy.

Her wax and wane

hide and seek.

With no light source of her own,

still she glows luminous in the sky.

Mysterious

Ambiguous.

She is the pull of ocean waves

menstrual cycles,

buried emotions.

She is wherever myth and magic lies.

A lamp for the gathering of witches

casting spells upon the midnight air.

A light to guide a gondola,

holding lovers in an embrace.

A beacon to call to flight

the snowy owl, across a woodland clearing .

Though she changes shape on us nightly,

we trust in astronomy.

We know her to be a singular, unchanged satellite.

We are not fooled.

yet we are entranced.

More than entranced,

even seduced, prefering myth and magic

to a waterless, creviced

dust bowl

cold, dark, and unreachable.

.

Easter Sunday

You have one of my dead things now God.

“Grieve it and leave it” You told me in a dream

months ago.

Cut and dry,

like the crisp, satisfying snap

through a branch

with pruning sheers.

The cut revealed ~raw and green ~

oozing.

But do I stop, try to put the branch back?

Weep for what might have blossomed on that branch?

If only the sun had been kinder?

If only the heavy snow less cruel?

I do not.

In fact ~ I move on

satisfied to have it done.

I turn my attention

to the many branches that remain,

that will burst forth

in obscenely enchanting profusions

of plentiful petals.

So abundant that to shake them

will shower me in softness and delight.

Spring comes.

Always.

Wounds ~ if we but cut cleanly,

decisively

will heal over.

New life will fill in

never weeping for long.

Isn’t Easter all about that?

Who am I to argue?

Peonies Perfect

I thought to get a picture

of her plate sized pink petals

layered in ruffles, like

a young girl’s prom dress.

Pink petals cupped like opened hands

but protective of her own heart center,

blood red, with golden stamen,

an offering of symmetry and rare perfection in the garden.

I will, I thought, composing the photo in my mind,

gain proximity by stepping gingerly in the strangled vines of sweet-pea.

I will, I thought, lean over the white picket fence

with Sony Cyber Shot in hand

and fill the frame with that flower face

in the fullness of its ripened hour.

With that same anticipation and hunger

I had sought to capture my daughter in digital

a day earlier, in her satin pink prom dress,

the color of this peony.

Her sweet eighteen year old face,

framed by soft, cascading tendrils around her eyes,

a sparkling blue, shadowed in smoky quartz,

her cheeks, blushing in bronze shimmer,

her lips plumped in coral ice.

I aimed my camera and zoomed in

to magnify her smile,

the crinkle of her eyes,

the dimple in her left cheek,

the shy tilt of her head.

Against a backdrop of woodland greenery and blooming azalea

she posed in our backyard

with the young man who presently holds her heart.

He encircled, with his hands, her waist,

lean in a corsetted top that I had tied,

threading and weaving satin ribbon through eyelets,

tugging the boned corset snug to her satisfaction,

double knotting and bowing the remaining ribbon

at the curve of her back ~

releasing it to trail down the train of her dress.

When the posing was done,

she asked to borrow my camera

hers being broken,

and this being her one and only prom night.

The limo was waiting.

No time to download and protect my treasure,

only to risk, yes or no?

All night, re-imagining the vision

that was my daughter in her peony pink satin gown

I feared she would leave the camera behind.

Drop it onto a dance floor to be trampled underfoot.

Rest it on a sink in the ladies restroom to be stolen.

I texted her cell phone, to remind ~

Take care of yourself.

Take care of my camera.

It was the next morning, when I thought to take a picture of the peony.

Spying the blossoms on the way to my car

as I paused to investigate the garden’s latest reveals.

And there, the day’s unmitigated perfection

bobbing its head in assent, as if to say, Yes, capture me now,

in digital.  I am plump for the photgraphic picking.

I will never look more lovely.

In fact, truth be told, I am dying.  So hurry.

Back into the house, for my camera

returned to me safe, after all, from prom night.

But stepping into the garden, and opening the lens cover

I discovered a flashing low battery icon.

Dead.

I thought to charge the battery

and attempt again to capture the photo

when I returned from the grocery store.

But truly, I felt the peony slipping away even then.

Even as I sprung open the silver trap door of the camera.

Even as I popped out the square, flat battery.

Even as I clicked it into place in the rechargeable unit,

and plugged the unit into the electrical outlet.

I knew, though I couldn’t have said why,

that I was on the losing side of a contract negotiation.

Hours later, reading at home,

having forgotten my intention

I heard the thunder.

Listened to a weather report of a cell

of violent storms moving into the area.

Saw the sky grow eerily dark

for the middle of the afternoon.

And then remembered.

I thought to replace the now charged battery,

run out ahead of the lightening,

sieze a visual memento

of a beauty that would not survive the wreckage of this day.

But who can say a tribute to a peony is worth the risk

of a lightening strike?

I am not brave.

Instead, I watched, through the rain-streaked window,

as golf ball sized hail stones

pummelled the peony,

her large head bowing

heavy with wind and rain.

Later, with the sky awash in a complimentary rainbow

I paid my respects.

June 2009



If Tomorrow

If Tomorrow Were My Last Day on Earth

If tomorrow were my last day on earth, I would hop a plane to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to see his face one last time. I would arrive even before the care package that I mailed today with the snow boots and granola bars. Goldfish crackers, envelopes of hot cocoa, a chapstick and mint milano cookies. And the ten dollar bill ~ not a lot of cash, but cheerful and heartening taped to one of the cocoa envelopes, Alexander Hamilton’s face side up.

I imagined his face, Michael’s, as he opened the box to investigate the small pleasures. Imagined his smile when he found the ibuprofen for his aching knees tucked into one boot. His aching- to- reach- his-goal knees. Skiing one hundred days in one Wyoming winter. And after he opened the box, dug into the goldfish, thumbed through the book, White Heat, A Memoir of an Extreme Skiing Life~ I imagined him reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his cell phone to text (no one calls anymore, voices are rare), to text, “Hey Mom, got the package. You’re the best.” And reading it on my cell phone, I would smile to think of his.

He’s good to his mother. I have over seventy sea glass marbles to prove it. Marbles that he made a game of finding, on a rocky New England beach one summer. They jumped into the palm of his hand every day as if skipping to a magnet. His charm convinces the sea to give up her treasures. The cranky cat, Jack, purrs and sleeps on his bed. Teachers and employers write recommendations that sound like fan letters. And he, just throwing himself into every game with 100% commitment and 100% goodwill, keeps racking up the points.

I might say that games are Michael’s passion. Baseball. Soccer. Nintendo. Touch football. Whiffle ball. Hockey. Playstation. Golfing. Fly fishing. Surfing. Skiing. But it’s more than that. It’s wrestling challenge to the ground. It’s not knowing, and then learning, and then mastering. Right now, he’s looking to master a mountain.

If tomorrow were my last day on earth, I would have to see his crooked smile in person one more time. Look into his blue eyes – like a husky dog’s in color, but open and trusting. Filled with curiosity. Happiness. I would be under strict orders from my mother’s heart, to see his handsome face. Run my fingers through his unruly hair and hug his lanky, lean frame. He would give me back a sure and certain hug with no self-consciousness, and a sweet kiss hello, truly glad to see me.

We would talk with ease about how he is having this amazing experience. Skiing the life of his dreams. We would visit, in his tiny room at Hostel X, looking out over the Continental Divide, and he would answer all my questions about his new life. As I listened, watching his animated face, his excitement would become my excitement. Even I, as his mother, would have to put aside my fears for his safety, fears of avalanches and broken limbs ~ and would be thrilled to hear of the jumps he nails, the crevices he leaps.

He would introduce me to the new friends he is making at the resort ~ and I would see, as they shook my hand, and talked of Michael, that they had already discovered he was something special. I would be proud, as I always have been, to be his mother. Proud when he was left in charge of catering functions at a small country club when he was a teenager. Proud when he went to San Diego without a job, and without knowing anybody, found employment in an engineering firm, and was invited to the boss’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. Proud when he maintained a 3.3 GPA at Northeastern University. Proud when he set off to Wyoming to live a four month dream of an adventure. Proud that he took me seriously, when I taught him to follow his passions.

Michael’s energy is, for me, all about joy, and if tomorrow were my last day on earth, I would have to get one more hit of that joy just in case there is no after life, and I wasn’t going to get another chance to hear his gravelly voice and his boyish laugh. I would hop a plane to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, wait at the bottom of a mountain covered with three feet of powered snow, to catch my son at the end of one of his runs, and lure him away for a brief visit. Not too long, after all, with only one day left on earth. Just long enough to imprint his face upon my heart before I leave.

Don’t Wait

Here is a poem I wrote recently, as a warning not to put our creative lives on hold.  They will not wait indefinitely.

Connie Banks

Connie Banks works three jobs.

None of them are at taking care of herself

I see, as she hoists her bulky frame out from around the metal desk

in the Bead O Rama warehouse

to show me sterling silver lobster clasps.

Connie Banks makes jewelry, only when she has to.

And she makes quilts, to give as gifts.

But her passion is painting with oil pastels,

and I might see her paintings in a one woman show,

except you need quite a few to put a portfolio together.

Nevertheless, she has a project going all the time.

She has learned to paint a little every day.

She has learned that.

And she keeps her work on the kitchen table.

Right now, it’s a picture of two red roses.

But she hasn’t had time, between her three jobs

to take more photographs for inspiration.

She’s a photographer too,

though she’s tired of beach landscapes and

nautical themes on every magazine cover.

I may see Connie Banks’ paintings

at the town library in the fall.

I promise her I’ll watch for them.

“It’s nice to be asked to show your work,” I say,

“and not have to knock on closed doors.”

Connie Banks works three jobs

now that she is retired,

and shows me lobster clasps

while she should be swirling pastel oil paints

across a willing canvas.

I want to shake her by the shoulders

and say, “What the hell are you waiting for?”

Your hair is white.

Your heart is exhausted under the burden of a hundred extra pounds.

Stop giving it away to these dead concrete walls.

Stop answering my foolish questions about jewelry findings

and run out into the August sunshine with your camera,

home to your palette

and the two red roses on the kitchen table.

She Arises Like Aphrodite

She arises every morning like Aphrodite, beautiful and triumphant, from a sea of clothes strewn on the floor. You can’t imagine how gorgeous she looks, coming out of that pit of hell that is her bedroom. Her jeans shredded in all the right peek-a-boo places, hugging her hips. Pastel T-shirts cropped to reveal a few inches of her six pack abs. Dark curls cascading down her shoulders. Long, black eyelashes fringing husky eyes, and full, red lips. She is, if not a goddess, at least a princess. And I, as the Queen Mother, have nobody to blame but myself.

She is my seventeen year old daughter, Maggie. It didn’t help that when she was born, I knew she would be the period at the end of my mothering sentence. This exquisite baby girl, with chestnut hair, navy eyes, and the fattest chipmunk cheeks on the planet, was allowed to sleep in our room, at an age long past when her two brothers had been relegated to the crib in their own room. She was adored by her two aging parents and two blonde-haired brothers. She was Maggie Muffins. Miss Maggie May. Maggie the Princess Angel.

And really, I only saw faint hints of the willful iron fisted personality that was to come. When I put her in her car seat, and she screamed for the duration of a long ride at the indignity of being strapped in. And whenever I took her in the stroller, not when we were outside in the neighborhood with the sun and the birds, but the moment I entered a mall, and attempted to direct the carriage into a store and her limbs would begin to flail. At those moments, I might have looked into my crystal ball and shuddered. But what good would it have done for me to peek into the future? The deed was a fait accompli, and all I would have been able to do was live it, as I have. Better for me now to remember the glorious, sunny childhood giggle days. The dolly baby cuddle days. Especially now, when to be in her presence, is to know how the monarchy must have felt in days of old when they used taste testers to avoid being slipped stricknine. True, she doesn’t hate me on all days. Not when I am taking her to Mary Lou’s for a Girl Scout Mint Cookie iced coffee with extra whipped cream. And certainly not when we are in Victoria’s Secret and I am buying her a form fitting aqua t-shirt that says something like, Girl for Hire.

But you should see her when I ask her a question about her plans for the night. Or who she is texting on her phone when we are in the car and I am hoping to chat. And worst of all, when I tell her, what to me, is so obvious I’m sure she already knows, that her room needs to be picked up. Actually, picked up and dumped somewhere in a landfill ~ but I would settle for the clothes being folded and put away. I would be thrilled if the make-up ~eyeshadows smudged on carpet, powdered blush dusting the vanity, was put back. If the bed, with the Tommy Hilfiger comforter that matches the beach theme of the room, was ever made, I would probably buy her a car. As it is, I just keep buying her more clothes to throw on the floor.

Who can say where I crossed the line between loving indulgences and indiscriminate over-indulgences? Was it when I replaced her lost dolly baby with three of the same type? Perhaps when I drove to every McDonald’s on the south shore to collect each week’s new promotional Beanie Baby with Happy Meal? It might have been when I began to rearrange my plans with my husband on the weekends so she could go to middle school dances. More likely, it was all these things, and the hundreds of other decisions I’ve made to see her smile, or have her throw her arms around my neck and hug me, or tell me “Thanks Mom, you’re the best.” So I’ve created a princess who threatens to overthrow the Queen on any given day. You watch her stride down the hall each morning, filled with confidence and poise, knowing she is adored in her Universe, and tell me I was wrong.