Stars

It is Monday...again.

The moon is trying to get fat and the sky is full of bright stars tonight. I stand barefoot in the wet grass in my front yard look up,up,up...I ask the same questions and stand silently and still waiting and wondering if tonight is the night they will be answered.

Little lamb you are too far away or my ears won't work the way they need to in order to hear you whisper but I keep trying, I won't stop trying. I dreamed of you last night. I was at a house that floats, I wanted to buy it but it seemed like the water would eat it up before I got old and I would have to live in a soggy house full of mold and fishes. I walked around trying to look for reasons to live there anyway and I found them little by little. One of my favorite things was knowing that this house was on a shore where things were delivered from all around the world and I watched as two giant elephants carried a barge through the water.

It was so beautiful, the elephants were the biggest animals I had ever seen they were rough and wrinkled, a deep gray-brown, they had sad eyes with long eyelashes and they moved gracefully and it seemed so magical. They just rose up out of the water bringing in a load of orange pumpkins on barge that had rusty wire sides and carried two men dressed in white who sat on top of the barge as if they were driving a carriage. I said, "Oh my god Stevie you have to see these elephants" I looked around but you were gone. I found you down the beach with a bunch of other kids running through waves and laughing. You kept disappearing under the water then I would find you again. I wanted to rescue you, tell you to come in out of the water but I knew I couldn't. You were wearing a green bathing suit and your hair was cut in a blond bob, you were seven or eight. I just watched you and followed you down the beach until you were not there anymore.

I can't remember much more of the dream but I do remember waking up feeling both happy and sad. Happy to see you so little and happy, running and playing with other kids. I was sad because even in the dream I knew I could not reach you, protect you, touch you.

I am making art now, I do it all day long. I am playing with paper, drawing, gluing, folding, cutting. I do it for hours it is the only thing that gives me any comfort right now. I listen to books on tape or entire seasons of television shows on DVD. I get into this grove that can only be called escaping. I know I can't run and hide, I know there is no short cut through sorrow but even I need a little break once in a while. Being this sad all the time could kill me. I feel it.

I find ways to affirm this life. I have new friends, I go and do the things that feel good. I don't deny myself like before. You taught me that there might not be a later so I am trying to fill it up the best that I can it isn't always easy but I push myself.

I was in Berkeley on Sunday, I was wandering around one of your favorite little shopping ghetto's on fourth street. I ate a tamale at that little Mexican place in the corner by Peets, remember? It is the restaurant with the fuscia walls and the home made corn tortillas. I think you had coffee there once, a Mexican coffee served in a bowl, it was spicy and had cinnamon and brown sugar in it.

I sat on one of the little wooden benches eating one of the best tamales I have ever had. I don't know why but the banana leaf it was laying on made me want to cry. I just wanted you there eating with me, remarking how much better food tastes when it is steamed in a banana leaf. I wanted to give you a bad time because you wouldn't let them put any of that yummy cojito cheese on your food, "vegan even when no one is looking" I would say. I loved to tease you but I was always so proud of you and how moral you were. You are the only person I have ever trusted 100% and you made it easy to do, you were good because you chose to be, even when it was not convenient or easy.

I can't believe that you and I will never do the things we did before ever again. How can that be? I have to do them alone or with new people now and it isn't the same. I loved hanging out with you, I loved your profound little bits of insight. You made me think, wonder, understand and want more.

I loved to lay next to you in your big bed and talk to you when you couldn't sleep. The things you pondered...I teased you, told you that I thought you were from outer-space, it wasn't possible to have a daughter that was so...you.

I wake up every morning thinking about you, remembering all over again. I ache.

This life hurts, but I am learning how to do this anyway. You taught me all the things I needed to know to get through it with dignity and strength. You never gave up, you never stopped being who you were. No matter how much was taken away, no matter how much it hurt, or how unfair it became you were always you. You believed in something off in the distance, something without a name or face.

What I am holding onto is something off in the distance with a name I know well and a face I miss, I believe in you.

Mommy