How is it possible that I am here, now?
I'm grateful for all the music that has been shared. Music is both salt and salve, it opens the wound and it heals. It saved me as a teenager when I fell deeply into the arms of Genesis, Cris Williamson, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and James Taylor. I turn to music for every emotion-- to celebrate, to mourn, to think more clearly or not at all. I long for the ability to make music more fluidly with my own voice and hands-- I've dabbled with guitar, piano, songwriting, singing, but have never had the ability to stick with it, to practice, and most importantly, to collaborate with other musicians. Chalk it up to a lack of confidence.
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I heard Hunter say to me just a few days after he died-- "Sing mom... I want you to sing and paint and write." And I heard it but it made me mad. Do I have to hurt this much to finally sit down again with my guitar? Do I have to lose you in order to find my voice? That's so fucking unfair. That's not what I signed up for.
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I worked so hard to become a mom-- I gave up everything... my marriage, the home I had lovingly remodeled, my entire community. I did what it took to devote myself to being a mother. A few months before leaving my first marriage I performed a one-woman show--physical storytelling and dancing where I revisited the traumas on my womanhood (getting pregnant and having an abortion at 16; betrayal; feeling abandoned as I was entering adulthood without a compass). At the end of this performance, I ritually stripped off all the clothing representing these experiences, then cleansed myself by pouring a large bowl of rice over my naked body-- the only sound in the theater was rice falling on the floor. I had a maiden, a mother and an elder dress me in white lace and I began to spin on a trapeze, white lace, white rice, all spinning to the most amazing version of Ave Maria you've ever heard. I reclaimed my body, my future, and my motherhood. This performance rearranged my cells, rewired my neural pathways. I was simply unwilling to wait any longer. Up until that point, I had believed I needed a man to be a mother, but despite many promises, my husband was unwilling to go there (thankfully). Silly me. I woke up one day, turned to my husband, and said, "I just realized I don't need you to become a mother." "You can't do that," he said. "Watch me," I answered. And within five minutes my marriage was over. I walked through the fire of his rage, left everything I'd built, found a 200 square foot apartment, and within four months began inseminations. I grieved, I withdrew, I liquified. It took a year of riding the daredevil hormonal rollercoaster-- ten trips to the fertility clinic with the doctor who didn't see me as a person but rather saw an almost 39-year-old uterus & two ovaries with little hope. He didn't know who he was dealing with. Thankfully his nurses were compassionate and supportive. I knew I would get pregnant yet every month, every period was excruciating. I got through it by painting daily. It kept me sane. Halfway through the process, I met Toni and she became my biggest advocate. I will never forget the morning I discovered I was pregnant-- September 1998. When I heard his heartbeat at nine weeks I knew that I would never, ever, be the same.
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How is it possible that I am here, now? I'm 61. The age my father was when he died. My son, the child I gave up everything for, is gone. And I am again plunged into the darkness except that this time I have no certainty about what will be on the other side-- there is nothing I'm reaching for. This was not my choice and I hate the idea that his death is part of my soul's calling. Fuck that. I know I'll make beauty out of the shit--I always do, but right now I'm just enraged that so many people get twenty chances at this life and Hunter? He got one. By comparison (unless I know), I'm the one that shouldn't have survived given my proclivity as a teen and young adult to hitchhike, sail across oceans with strangers, travel the world, hike to 18,000', drive from Portland to Guatemala, and back... why am I alive and he's not? I am so angry. Now I have to move/dance/shake the rage out of my body-- what music do you recommend for that, dear ones? I want to throw paint against the wall, run my fingers through the colors, through my hair, through the trees. Hell, maybe I'll throw myself against the wall that I've thrown the paint on. I have to get this out of my body before it eats me up.
