I have a friend who is arm-wrestling cancer. What she might lack in bicep-strength, she makes up for with a great selection of wigs, eyeliner, frilly undergarments, and a vision of a gopher-free garden, a garden where loofahs grow up to sing songs of exfoliation. I’ve been thinking about her all day, about a brief exchange of words between us.

Today I realized that issues of health often slip into my writing and that I don’t intend them as gonging sounds of drama and doom.

Admitting these moments on the page (I’m tired, I’m in pain, I’m sick…again) has mostly been a bold declaration and exorcism that these are the conditions I’m untangling myself from. They are the conditions that have shaped me but they are not me.

For years I was ashamed about struggling with a body that doesn’t keep up with my mind and spirit. The more I acknowledge this on the page, the more I turn with compassion and gratitude to the strengths that these challenges are developing in me.

I do not know what this will look like in six months, a year, two years from now, but I do know this: every year I grow healthier and stronger than I was the year before. I haven’t leapt over my limitations in a single bound, they are still present, but I’m no longer wasting energy battling them – at least, not as much as I used to.

This blog is mostly for me, I realize this. There is a power in confession and witness, so tonight I come to the page and I write:

I am learning to rest when my body asks me to. I am learning to listen to my dreams – especially when they shout and throw frogs at me. To invest in those around me wisely.  To not argue with fools, not even in my head. There is a soft spot in my heart where all of our foolishness resides and I know if I step too close to its edge, I’ll sink in.

My body has taught me to apologize when necessary, to walk away when no apology is necessary; to not care what the world thinks because the world is often thinking of  itself, and that I am one of those chattering voices that make up the world.
As often as I am able, I try to be a voice at peace with itself.

Today, I’ve been thinking about this lesson: When a woman with a great selection of wigs, frilly undergarments, and a knowledge of eyeliner, reaches out her hand in the form of words, you take that hand.

You listen carefully to hints dropped about braiding wildflowers into crowns. Stories of how to trail toilet paper like a bridal train on days when the sun is high and bright in the sky.

It’s how to win the arm-wrestling match.

 

 

 

 

It is five minutes past midnight. I have waited for this window of quiet and it feels stolen.

Earlier, Dan and I waved the children out of the kitchen, our small tribe of screech monkeys clinging and grasping and bargaining and demanding.

“Out!”

“This is Mommy and Daddy time. We’re trying to have a conversation.”

A chorus of protest followed. Small hands wrapped around my knee – the one I popped out the other day moving a piece of furniture.

“Out!”

Our hands waved like we were shooing birds. There were pots and dishes everywhere. Toys underfoot. Clothes to be folded, thrown in small mountains on the couch. Clothes to be gathered and put away.

This is the thing about motherhood: there are always clothes to wash, dry, and fold. Things to be swept and removed and maintained. Sheets and mattress protectors have been hanging on our line outside for a week now, weathering rain and clean winter light. I’ve looked at them guiltily.

There is always one more thing to do. One more thing that I’m afraid will distract me away from the page, from my master’s thesis, from novel revision, from the fence I’m meant to stain, the food I planned to make, the nap I need to take, and the bills I need to pay.

In the kitchen, the air was full of smells that clashed up against the ferocious noise of my children; garlic, cumin, butter, a roast in the oven. I sliced and diced pumpkin and threw it into a blender, I told myself that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t measuring or paying much mind to the instructions – it was happening, I was making soup. I could always add salt, right?

Joaquin stood guard. Hands on his hips, he yelled, ”Eda (Zaviera)! Sol! BE QUIET! Mommy! DADDY! QUIET!” It was as if he sensed that someone needed to take charge.

This life… I wake up to it every morning and stumble my way through.

I no longer wonder how I arrived here. Instead, I keep moving, keeping one step ahead of the fear that might overtake me if I stopped and really wondered – the kind of wonder that asks: This? This husband? These three children? These friendships? This family?

How can I love so much?

I have to let it go every day because the fear of it being taken from…it’s too much. It’s paralysis.

I let go as I pick up small toys turning into bigger toys. Small clothing turning into bigger clothing. I watch the lines appear on my face. I watch my husband pass through the house, just out of my grasp, and we look at one another like two lovers in a black and white movie, kept out of grasp by the swirling motion of a thousand extras.

In my moving forward, I fall back. Continuously. So that I don’t get too ahead of my life.

It is half past midnight and I’m up with a chest cough that rakes my throat and lungs and I’m learning to fall back when this shadow stretches toward me. Fatigue and illness, the two hands that reach and continue to reach for me. I’m beginning to nurture the belief that if I nap, if I rest, the shadow will retreat.

The belief is a flame that I breathe on gently, watching it catch hold of what it can and grow.

I believe that if I surrender, we will be carried safely along until the final light fades from my eyes, my hand held in my husband’s, my children at my side, and our story…it will continue on the other side.

My children open their arms and my hours go diving in. This love is a gamble of amnesia; what moments will they remember? What moments slip through my fingers as ashes, as light that has flared and gone?

My memories of the past are a favorite garment worn threadbare; if it were placed over my face I would be able to breathe.  The past is strong in the places where I need warmth. Thin where I need oxygen and light. Flexible where I want movement.

Every day, I wonder what garment I’m weaving with my children.

Every day, I’m left only with the fibers in my hand, the material I’ve been given to work with; the small fingers curling against my palm, the scent of skin and hair, the weight of their skulls against my chest…

…the connection of their silent beginnings in my body.

Their silence transforming into a language of movement inside of me.

And now, here they are. They come to me when sick, tired, happy, and sad. I am beginning to trust in this blood memory we share. This home of heartbeat and shelter that has been theirs from the beginning.

I want to believe that right now, while they are small, it is enough for them to curl up against my body to remember the perfect love that is their birthright.

I have to trust these fibers are stronger than anything I can imagine.

They will cradle us.

Weave us together, year after year.

I have to believe in the strength of each moment, even the ones that burst into flame, leaving only ashes in the air.

I have to believe these moments turned into hours turned into days turned into years…they are all recorded in the blood that moves through my family.

Dan points to a spot next to the newly planted feijoa bush and says, “Is that a good spot? This time I’m going to dig it deep enough for several of them.” He’s wearing a flannel shirt and  basketball shorts and I’m wearing dirty UGG boots, cut-off shorts, and a Mickey Mouse hoodie sweatshirt from Disneyland. We are both exhausted.

Behind Dan, the moon sits in the sky, not nearly as impressive as it is meant to be. It is just another moon casting shadows. At my feet, there are a pile of bodies, dark and light, feet like uprooted trees. I can see the claws, the scaled skin, and I think I will probably never eat chicken again.

I gather surface weeds and grass clippings while Dan digs. I rake dirt over the two graves he’s already dug. I promised the children that I would call them out when it was time to bury the ‘boof-head-rock-star chicken’, so I do.

Sol wants to see the body.

Zaviera stands at the edge of the garden and says, “I just feel like dead chickens give me excusement.” She waves her hands in the air and takes a step back. “What do you mean, sweetheart?” I ask because she was determined to say goodbye to the grey chicken and now she stands in the shadows, shrinking toward the light and warmth of the house.

“I feel like I have excusement,” she says. “Excusement means that looking at that,” she points to the bodies waiting in the freshly turned earth, “makes me feel yucky inside. I feel bad inside looking  at their bodies.”

“I understand,’ I say, “I feel yucky inside, too.”

This morning, the children raced out to say hello to the chickens, to feed them, to befriend them and imagine names. Sol has been full of excitement since the chickens arrived. He has been ready to take on responsibilities, including cleaning up their poo. We all fell in love with the chickens. For me, they held an extra level of attachment because we’d inherited them from a dear friend going through a major life transition. I felt a spiritual guardianship over the chickens.

We were getting dressed, preparing to go buy materials for building their nesting boxes, when I heard the first cries of alarm. It only took a few seconds for me to register that something was wrong.

Pepita was in the aviary and she had one of the chickens in her mouth, shaking it. Feathers were in the air. I yelled. Sprinted. It was only seconds and I expected one dead chicken – the one in her mouth. I wasn’t prepared to find bodies everywhere. It put me in a state of shock. These bodies.

I chased Pepita out of the aviary. Closed the door. Knelt down to touch the bodies, one after another.
Something went quiet inside of me, somewhere in front of my spine, and in the center of my throat.

So tonight, I want to claim the immunity of ‘excusement’ to mourn what was lost in my care, including our beloved big oaf, Pepita, who is suddenly thrust into a new territory of blood and instinct and a path that branches away from our own. We are praying to find her a good home, free of smaller animals that tempt her lion-hunting compulsions. People she can guard and protect and love as is her hard-wired nature to do.

As winter curls around me with its cold, its falling away of greenery, its drawing inward, I feel death stretching, a shadow against the light of a very full moon.

I am grateful for the lessons wrapped in these small pockets of grief; I tell my children this as they process their sadness and anger and sense of responsibility throughout the day. Sol was in tears because he was the reason that Pepita got into the aviary. His sense of justice translated into his wanting Pepita to be taken to the pound, a life for a life. This included his own, he felt he should be given away. He didn’t kill the chickens with his hands, but he left the door unlocked. He went into the aviary when we told him not to. He didn’t want to go near the chickens again, afraid he might do something that would lead to more death or hurt. Zaviera cried at the loss of the chickens and at the loss of trust in a dog she believed would  protect our family and all of its members. Joaquin ran around making loud clucking noises and scolding the dog.

One more day alive. One more day I realize this: we all deserve excusement from judgment, excusement from believing we understand what is right or wrong. These lives of ours are filled with grief and joy. More often than not, they seem so intertwined that I wonder if we don’t lose something in attempting to untangle them.

My father sits in front of my laptop, a can of keyboard cleaner in his hand, and says, “You need to start writing again. Also, what the hell did you do to this computer?”

At least this is how I remember it. Was it three weeks ago already?

I sat at the kitchen table, side-eyeing his industrious dismantling of the keys from my laptop. I pretended to ignore his grumbling about all of the crap that had managed to gather beneath letters nearly worn away from hours of typing.

I denied responsibility as I sipped red wine and ate dark chocolate with pockets of tangy cherry sneaking up on the edges of my tongue.

“I crouch on the ground when I write. I have three small children. Stuff gets under keys.” .

He aimed the cleaner at the laptop, “Sure it does.”

I switched tactics, ”It was Dan. He has been using my computer. Boys are dirty. It’s a fact.”

I’m sure that Dan was somewhere in the room and he rolled his eyes at me. He might have even said,

“Yes, it was ALL me.” I didn’t argue.

Of course it was.

I can’t be sure of most of this, only the part where my father grumbled and told me I needed to start writing again. I can’t be sure because I fell asleep and woke up on the other side of the planet, three weeks are now a tightly rolled dream nestled somewhere in front of my spine, sighing beneath my heart. It turns in its dreaming and I shift as I sit with my feet on the chair, typing…

…writing.

We have been a bustle of activity since our luggage emptied across the carpet and our sleep-confused bodies crawled into the beds that should be familiar to us. I’m grumpy in the morning as I pull Zaviera’s hair into a ponytail, as i stumble across several loads of laundry that needed to be folded. I try to gather my breathing against my spine, to hug it, as I navigate the disorientation that I feel at having travelled across the planet in twelve hours.

I wake up expecting the smell of my father’s coffee. I wake up expecting to see my mother emerge from her bedroom, her hair soft against her back. I wake up to this beautiful home and three children scrambling over one another and a stack of bills and a list of things in my mind.

I wake up feeling the great divide of our bodies and distance.

I wake up and begin again.

I am up late with the wind. It roars like the conversation of a crowd, constant and everywhere all at once. I strain to hear my thoughts. Trees cast their shadows, frantic fingers dissecting street lights. All of this bluster is pressing against the hours I have to think.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, Sol asked me, “Can God’s love be broken?”
I said, “No.”
“Not by anyone?”
But before I could answer, Sol continued, “Only his son? He can break God’s love because he died?”
And I had to stop what I was doing, whatever it was. I could have been shaking carpet cleaner everywhere, arcs of white powder moving in slow motion. Maybe I had the refrigerator open, my hand on my hip, staring, trying to remember why I opened the door in the first place. Or, scanning the shelves of their inventory, trying to figure out dinner. Most likely I was rinsing dishes, extending my leg to keep Joaquin from opening the dishwasher, asking Zaviera to climb down from the cupboard shelf. Whatever it was I was doing, it stopped then.

He continued, “If God forgives us, can we do anything? Or does that hurt God?”
“Well,” I said, pulling one child from the dishwasher, another from the top shelf, or maybe turning off the vacuum cleaner, leaning against the counter, “Everything we do has a consequence. When you do something that isn’t good for you or others, there will always be a consequence, but no matter what we do we are always loved.”
Sol frowned. He was trying to even the score in his mind, to figure out what he could and couldn’t do without consequence, what God might or might not accept. What I was saying was too big, too broad-stroke.

“Okay, here is an example. You know how if you hit your brother, I get upset?”
Sol nodded.
“And I have to teach you that it isn’t okay to hit someone smaller than you?”

Sol wanted to argue, but he didn’t. In his mind, a hit deserves a hit, whether or not it was intended or if the hitter is five years younger.

“But, even if I get upset I always love you? Even if I don’t like what you do, I always love you?”
“Yeeee…ah.”
He understood.
“Well that’s how we are loved.”
It seemed like enough. He walked away, already thinking of other things. Whether or not Joaquin had touched his Ninjagos, or if Daddy took more than his share of hotcross buns.

The wind has settled. Sally sits up on the table, Belicia cowers beneath her. Earlier, I discovered that Belicia had peed on the carpet and now she is all eye whites and bent ears around me. Sally reaches down and taps Belicia on the head, testing. She does it again. I wish I had the camera. Sally is Zaviera’s animal familiar. A crazy cat who pets dogs on the head out of curiosity; what will it do?

My children are teaching me about curiosity, about stopping before I answer a question. Sol is teaching me to listen. Sometimes it feels like we translate things so differently, but what I understand correctly is this: he is looking to me, the way that children do, to know that he is not alone in this strange world.

I remember my child-self clearly. Her fears, anxieties…her awe. Her need to know her parents were her allies.

Before I put him to bed, Sol stands at the doorway and watches as Joaquin crawls all over me.
“Mommy, was I like that before Zaviera was born? Did you do this with me?”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
“Did I get more cuddles? Because I was the first?”
I see the tears in his eyes, the way he is holding himself rigid, and I hold out my arms to him. Joaquin presses against my chest and says, “No! Go away!”

But Sol is already beneath my arm, his skinny legs stretched out next to mine.
We discuss this issue of cuddles. He expresses his anger that there is anyone but him in the family. He tells me he wants time, just the two of us.

Seven years and here I am, understanding: I’m a mother. Time is the currency I deal with these days.

And that I don’t think I could have understood God seven years ago, not the way I am beginning to, now that I am a mother. My children – they translate God for me.

I want to tell my son that yes, there are things that can break God’s heart,  but never God’s love.
I want to tell him that God’s heart, like a parent’s, is made to break.
I want to tell him that every year that passes, I break and grow stronger.

But these are the things that don’t translate into words, so I draw him closer to me.
I listen.

I learn.

It is humbling to stand at the edge of grief. There is nothing to do but witness and allow it to do what it does: transform.

Hundreds of people have shown up for Earl’s tangi. At one point, over three hundred are accounted for. Dan and I stand at the borders of the crowd. We can’t hear much of what is being said until my sister-in-law steps forward into the bright light of a day that has stripped her family back to the bones.  They are left holding the fragile skeleton that lives beneath all of the busy this’s and that’s we layer over it.

I imagine the bare bones of our reality as this: that at any moment we might be taken from this life that we cling to with complaints, goals, stressors, gossip, judgment, drama, fear, celebration, hunger, pain.

But none of it binds us to life in the way we intend it to, it doesn’t protect or pad us.

Alziere steps out, wearing a shirt with her little brother’s face printed across her chest, his tag “Deskrym” printed on the back. She looks small and mighty all at once as she addresses the hundreds of people who have come to pay their respects. I am in awe of her. I am in awe of the way grief moves through her body as she speaks. It is one of the most honest things I’ve seen in another person. She lifts her hand in the air, a gesture that has become familiar to me. The ancient inheritance of her Maori culture,a  culture that is  now part of my inheritance, the inheritance of my children and their children.

I see Alziere as God has created her - a leader, a woman of great mana (power), a woman who has handled more grief in the last few years than I want to imagine, and yet, each grief has been transformed by her faith.

“This is what my little brother has taught me. To not judge on appearances, to not judge the lives  of others. Look to the heart. Love on each other,” she says, “because you don’t know when you’ll be taken. God has put us here to love on each other.”

It becomes too much for her and my brother-in-law, so like my husband, moves forward with a quiet strength and wraps his arms around Alziere, just as Dan wraps his arms around me.

I’m aware of the strength of my husband’s muscles, the stability of his bones, the way his heartbeat anchors me. I’m aware of these things because I imagine them gone and that imagining is something I never want to experience. I allow myself to lean into him as the sun presses down, its heat gathering in the black threads of our clothing.

Driving into Hamilton for the first night of the tangi, I turned to Dan and described my sudden revelation about what I wanted done with my bodily remains. It involved an extensive road trip so that my ashes could be thrown into the ocean at various spiritually important places beginning in New Zealand, travelling through California, New York, Baja, and ending in Spain. I wanted a great gathering of all the people I loved so that they could become well-acquainted with one another. I wanted them to be familiar so that we’d all recognize one another when it was time to cross the great divide. I also wanted eighties music mixed in with the more spiritually moving soundtracks. A lot of laughter, dancing, and funny stories, so long as there were no sharing of my secrets.

“I might be dead,” I explained, “but I’m still a deeply private person despite, you know…” I waved my hands in the air to express the rest of what I meant: all of this! and this! You know, my random confessions and bold declarations! Despite this, I’m deeply private.

I was being irreverent because how else do you deal with this kind of discussion?

But Dan quietly took in my grand plan and then he said, “How about we do all of that while you are still alive? You can go to each one of those places and scratch off some dead skin cells in the ocean, sort of like leaving your scent. It’ll be just as good.” He took his hand off the wheel as he glanced at me, “I want you to be buried with me. I don’t want you scattered all over the place.”

I agreed. His words were an anchor that sunk me deep into the reality of what I am: a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a body cradled by an island.

When Earl’s body is carried to his final burial, there is a wailing that rises up to the sky, a primal sound that reminds me of the cry of coyotes out in the desert. I don’t allow myself to imagine what it would mean to be walking my son’s body toward a final resting place because I know the imagining would exhaust me to my core. Instead I stand in witness of the beauty of these women’s voices rising up against gravity, against the force of loss. I hold Dan close to me. I hide in his warmth.

As people line up to say goodbye, to throw a handful of earth on to Earl, the women sing songs of worship. They are the voices of an island.

Dan and I watch the people around us deal with death in their different ways. Some of them stand on the graves of others and gossip as if a mother isn’t longing to be buried with her child. A young, muscular man wipes at his eyes, moving through his peers with his pain hovering above his skin. Another young man throws signs, laughs, acts like nothing is happening, like he’ll live forever but never really live a moment of that over-extended life.

As Alziere has said, we can’t judge, we can only love. Death is not easy for any of us and I can’t imagine facing death without faith.

When the line has thinned, Dan and I walk over to pay our respects. The grave is deeper than any grave I’ve seen. Later I will learn that Earl’s brother and father spent the night digging it deep enough for his mother to be buried on top of him. It is so deep I feel like I am standing at the edge of a canyon when I throw the dirt on to the flowers and box that holds his broken body.

It is this image that haunts me, a father and son digging a grave deep enough for two bodies; a mother and her child. I imagine each strain of muscle, each heaving of earth. The sweat, the thoughts lost in the repetitive action of digging.

It has left me quiet, all of it. It has left me a little more honest. There is no room for false humility or pride in this lifetime, just a gratitude for the moments we are given and the roles that we are born into.

Even in death, Earl was described as ‘haututu’ (mischief) and an ‘agent of change’. He was a game changer on the edge of breakthrough. What he’s left me with is the message that his sister spoke beneath a bright sun, “Judge not. Love on each other.”

Because in the end, our legacy is the story our hearts tell.

As we drive home from the tangi, I find myself taking comfort in the trees. It’s the way their roots anchor deep into the earth, mostly unseen, but those roots are a reflection of the balance needed for the tree to reach up to the heavens.

So on earth, as it is in heaven.
Love here because there on the other side there is only love.

Earl and Alziere

The storm is here and now you are gone. The sky is grey, the wind blows the leaves so that their pale undersides are exposed. I walk downstairs and stand awkwardly in the doorway of our housemates’ apartment because I feel a compulsion to tell them they are like family to me. What I am trying to say is that we are here with our plans and then without warning, it is done…the only thing that continues is this, our love.

I say it in too many words and repeat myself and then I have nothing left inside of me so I climb back up the stairs and grab my mug of tea. I sit with my knees up on the chair and look through photos until I find this one.

Its only been a few hours and between the quiet crouched in my mind, are the thoughts of your family’s grief. My sister-in-law, Alziere – your big sister. Your mother. Your father. Your brothers and sisters. Your aunties. Your uncles. Your gorgeous baby girl.

The days ahead will blow through us. They will rage. There will be a clean calm where there is nothing but the small acts of those of living making sense of your absence.

I imagine the moments of your morning, your hands on the steering wheel, your mind on the day ahead.
I imagine the moment it all changed.

In that moment I imagine the light of angels surrounding you and a peace that surpasses all understanding.

Godspeed Earl Kingi.

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Tonight the storm moves toward us. I hear it gathering on the roof, in the chimney. I feel the horizon blurring beyond the walls of our home. “Why is there a storm coming?” Zaviera asks. I lean against the wall and sigh. “I don’t know, I might have to think about that one and tell you tomorrow.” I’m aware of the small, compact curves of her body and delicate bones, the way she watches me intently, expecting that I should know everything. What I’ve given her is not enough so I try again, “The storms come to blow away all of the old things. Sort of like when I clean house, I come blustering through, getting rid of everything old that doesn’t belong. I gather all the clutter and throw it away. That’s what a storm does – it gets rid of the clutter.”

“So a storm is like God’s cleaning?” she says, pulling her dadu out of her mouth and tilting her head.

“Exactly, it’s just God cleaning. Now go brush your teeth.”

Yesterday as I drove, I noticed a chair in the middle of the road. A garbage can was on its side.  Pieces of paper and plastic were strewn across our driveway. Puka and Magnolia leaves huddled around them. I didn’t register the stories of winds that had been blowing trampolines over fences and up against road signs. I didn’t think about the winds that had bent trees and pushed chairs across our deck. I made up my own stories, “Who tossed a chair in the middle of the street? Who didn’t pick up that rubbish bin? How did that meat packet end up in our driveway?” My mind was too occupied by numbers. The money in, the money out, the money owing, the ideas of how I might change all of this and balance it out while completing my thesis and rewriting the novel and submitting short stories again and occasionally snuggling my toes into my husband’s lap and feeling the quiet blessing of his breathing.

I push away from the wall, pick up clothing, a receipt, torn pieces of paper, a dish, a crumb, a toy car, and I want to turn to our housemate, Andy, and thank him for being part of our family, for simply being alive, but I don’t. I throw away the receipt, the torn paper, the crumbs. I toss the car into its basket. I slot the dish into the dishwasher. I put the clothing into the laundry basket.

The wind gathers in the dark.

I am looking forward to the way this storm will wrap itself around our family. For weekends, Dan has taken the children to Hamilton so that I could catch-up on things, but now we can’t afford that extra money for gas and we’re grateful, because here we are, together, gathered in the warmth of our home.

I go into the bedroom to hum Sol and Zaviera to sleep. Zaviera’s belly is exposed and I hover my hand just above the softness of her skin. “So precious,” I say to Dan. He laugh-smiles, the way we do when there is no other way of describing this warmth of purpose that is parenthood, this awe of what we have created together.

Later, I will bring up the short story I’ve been working on while Dan plays Skyrim. I will trust tomorrow to tomorrow. I am grateful for today.

The storm has arrived. A wave of rain presses down around us. Water gathers in the streets and runs into drains.
I am ready for God to clean.

The last two weeks are a storm of dust and hoofbeats and hot breath on my neck. The taste of dirt and sweat in my mouth, my heart pounding, my muscles weak, my mind raising its whip high, high, high in the air.

I can feel the stretch of my ambition, an arch in its neck as it throws its head back and finds that there is nothing to declare. Nothing at all. I can’t summon a battle cry.

Zaviera starts her first day of school tomorrow. She curled up into me tonight and said, “I don’t want to go without you. It’ll be scary.” I repeated the names of the girls we had met. I walked us along the hours of her scrambling up on to my lap as I discovered I’m not so bad with little children after all, I have a way of gathering them to me.

By the second day of bringing Zaviera to ‘familiarity’ meetings with her class, I’d already fallen in love with two of the girls and claimed them as the friends that would accompany Zaviera through the years to come. Bianca and Sylvia. Bianca pronounced “BE -ANK - AH” not “BE AHNK AH” as I was pronouncing it.

“So sorry,” I said.

It fascinates me, this inversion of pronunciation. The A’s that I’m used to making soft are now hard. Everything is backwards, turned upside down, and I will never be able to trust my ability to spell now that I’m swimming in commonwealth language. I’ve noticed lately that I come bursting up for air amongst the missing R’s of language with an American accent that refuses to be subdued. I have developed a tendency to nickname all those around me like I’m from the south, ”Come here, sugah”, “that’s alright sweetpea,” even as everything else about me becomes tangled in the life and culture of this island that is home. So much so that now when I watch American television or read the updates of friends back in the USA, I no longer feel a connection. I don’t relate. The ponga trees, the rolling green hills, the scent of South Pacific air, these things have become my landing, my place of familiarity.

But lately, I’ve been dreaming of my other home. The home that my DNA spent centuries gathering its lessons from: Spain.

I dream of Spain.

I dream of the island.

I watch my children grow.

I watch this passionate dance of genetics emerge in them. It swirls its skirts. Slaps its thighs. Flares its cape.

And then there is me. I sometimes feel so inadequate to the display of beauty and passion that is my life as a mother, daughter, woman, wife.

I try to stay one step ahead of it, to not be consumed by the bulls with their heads bowed, horns aimed, breath at my neck.

All of these thoughts are with me in the dark as I gather my daughter into my body. I rest my hand along her hip, aware of how quickly this intimacy will slip away from me.

“I have so much faith in you,” I say. “People love you. They can’t help it. At the end of the day, you will know how brave you are. Would you like me to rub your feet? Will that help you sleep?”

“No thanks,” she said, pulling my arm tighter around her small, precious bones.

She falls asleep while I hum off-key the only lullabye I know.

I can’t take credit for any of this life that surrounds me, even though I often try to. I try to grip it to tightly or pretend that it falls behind me, as effortless as a shadow.

Really, it is a dance. A surrender. A throwing open of the gates. A heel stomping. A deep breath. The snort of bulls. The charge of a heart pounding. Knowing that so long as it beats, it can’t be trampled.

Tonight, as the family sleeps, I feel the bulls catch up to me. One grabs me in its teeth and flings me gently on to its back. I grab its horns and laugh, the wind in my face.

Ole’!
Kia kaha!

There was nothing to fear after all.