A Safe Place ~ ...in the garden.

    Present day 1997

I sat and watched my father for hours as he worked on our roof with my husband, all too eager to grab whatever tool they might need or frequent the kitchen for more bottles of water to keep them going. Was I ten again? I laughed at myself in the kitchen on my third trip to deliver sustenance to my two favorite men, shaking my head at what seemed so childish. Oh, I have really lost it! I am a 26-year-old married woman and mother of three, and to this day, I am still my father’s little girl. Being this happy when my dad is near even makes my husband smile and shake his head in amusement.

 "Hey Kiddo", my hubby mimics my dad while winking at him, do you think you might make some dinner soon?" 

I shot back an evil eye as I put my hands on my hips and smiled, as if to say ”Really?”

 "Should I push him off the roof now or later, Katie-pie?" my father chides.

"Later, maybe…just be careful up there and I’ll call you in when dinner is ready."

I hear my father’s laughter as I make my way around the house, and I can do nothing but smile and love him a bit more every day.

I decided to gather up my mom and the kids in the garden. My mother is tending to my tomatoes, the size of grapefruit with a taste that bursts into your mouth, with warmth and sweetness that causes you to close your eyes and smile.

My mother is in her J.Jill jeans, Dad’s sweatshirt, and her Docksiders from the early 80's. She looks adorable. She has a scarf pulling back her blonde hair, reminiscent of Grace Kelly. She has next-to-no makeup on, except for her Revlon Naked Pink lipstick, which she has worn forever. I don't know what she'll do if they ever discontinue that color. I remember taking sips of her Tab when I was a kid and seeing her lipstick marks on the lip of the can. It had a strong perfumey taste, and oddly, despite my hating the combination of lipstick and soda, I always took a sip. Maybe it was the fact that we weren’t ever allowed more than a taste of any soda, coffee, wine, or beer which made that one sip something you’d grab, even if you really could have cared less. You just weren’t going to miss the chance to have what the grownups had.

She smells of Chanel and looks as beautiful today as she did in her wedding album, an album I had thumbed through so often, as a kind of bedtime story when I was little. White tents filled with twinkle lights, candles, and fancy tables covered in white linens in Grand mom’s back yard overlooking the ocean. It was magical and it was what I dreamed my wedding day would be like when I grew up. 

 She has been stable for almost eleven years, not counting the year we all fell apart from losing Sam. We are all so thankful for her recovery and proud of her strength. Since then she has remained on her medicine and is still seeing her psychiatrist monthly.

I am particularly proud of my father for never walking away or giving up on her through those years and all of the craziness they carried, for staying as constant as a rock for us, especially when we needed his courage the most. Unlike most of my other friends’ parents who had split up, mine were still quite happily together. I remember one conversation in particular, when I asked my father if he ever thought about leaving her and taking us with him.

“It was never an option Kate. I loved your mother more than life and I knew one day she'd come back to me, back to us, and she did." This conversation played in my head as I moved towards my garden.

Now she was a dreamy grandmother who refused to be called grandma, which was for "old people!" she said…and so she was Mom-mom and that suited us all just fine.

My little love beans are busy moving rocks and trying to keep on the oversized gardening gloves that Mom-mom has given them. They feel like big helpers and have such a seriously delightful glee about them. Will, named after my father, is six, and he loves everything about nature and being busy. Gillian, named after my grandmother, is four-and-a-half and the spitting image of me; she is all too eager to please and is always humming when she is busy with a project. She has this adorable habit of chewing on her tongue when in concentrating deeply. It just kills me. And Peter; Peter is three years old. He is our little Buddha, always taking in everything around him with such joy that it causes one to stop and watch with contagious wonder. They have melted my heart and I love every minute of being their mom.

"Mom, do you and Dad want to stay for dinner, or do you think Dad might get too tired?" Dad had a fainting spell a few weeks ago that ended up being nothing more than a sugar crash, but it scared the hell out of me nonetheless.

"Stop worrying about him Kate, he's fit as a fiddle. Dinner would be wonderful. What can I do to help?"

"Not a thing Mom, just come on in and have some tea while I get the kids in the bath."

"Come on lovies!" My mother reaches out to Will to pull her up as she moans a bit from her achy back.

"Oh boy Willow, your Mom-mom is stiff." Will pats the dirt off the back of her jeans and smiles. “

 Gillian bops over in her tutu and frog boots, wiggles her index finger in a ‘come here’ motion, then takes each of her sweet cherub hands and cradles my mother’s cheeks. She looks my mother seriously in the face and whispers closely, “You’re not old Mom-mom, you just get extra crinkly when you smile, don’t worry.” Gilly then mimics what she thinks it looks like. I laugh as my mother kisses her and says, “Well thank you, dear. I feel so much better now that you told me.”

"What’s ‘sniff’?” says Peter, as he follows the erratic flight of a nearby butterfly.

We all chuckle as I wrap him up in my arms and kiss under his sweet full cheeks. I linger there and inhale his sweet smell of dirt, basil, and baby. I catch a glance of my mother placing her hand over her heart, as she knows exactly how much my heart is swelling. We smile at one another and all move our way to the back door, an old wooden door that creaks as you open it and slams shut when you let it go. I swear I smile every time I hear it.

when all you can do is cry...

....some days, just when you thought you'd found a way through, a better way, maybe even a beautiful gift. Sometimes one word can undo that peaceful feeling and bottom you out. When the little girl that has been trying so hard to be brave, just has to come out and pout, pulling back the big cry, until you just can't pull it back one second longer and you cry, until the sobs finally break with a giant yawn and a soft pillow to fall asleep into. Then you wash the mascara out the next day and start over, hoping things will get fixed. Hoping that he'll fix them...

will it hurt?...

Well I remember that he was handsome, cute at first, even plain, and later, remarkably handsome. He had a tattoo that was just peeking out from his shirt collar and I wasn’t one for tattoos, but it didn’t bother me. That’s what stands out the most about our first meeting… It didn’t bother me. Maybe it was because he was captivating on some unconscious level that left me open and without judgment. I did ask if he’d show me, wow only two minutes into meeting this stranger at a diner and I’m asking him about his tattoo, (I’m bold that way) saying it looks very yogic, though all I can see is a lick of fire shooting out through his sable chest hair. He smiled a very shy but confident smile and unbuttoned three buttons slowly and showed me. Yup, it was Hindu, painting the five elements in very subtle and beautiful colors and at the center of his chest was a purple lotus flower all open and vulnerable. Maybe that is when he had me, maybe that is when I should have left. Open and vulnerable, I could relate to that. “will it hurt?...” a young girls voice whispers to me, but I push her away. Somewhere deep within I could see the darkness at the end and even tried to warn my older self.

 I almost don’t want to mention the next part, but it is the most interesting part of our meeting. I had a guru at the time and as I bantered the way I tend to banter, I mentioned that I taught yoga and that his tattoo reminded me of my guru. She was Hindu and I....he cut in, “Your guru?...” his eyebrows lifting in a hopeful and curious way. “Yeah I know, sounds crazy, a Main Line mom with a guru. Her name is Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, I’ve been studying meditation and I found her through a healer friend of mine… wow, it is possible for me to sound even flakier.” He stared at me as if I had to be kidding. “She’s my guru too, in fact. I’m leaving in six weeks to live at the Ashram and do philanthropic work for Prasad.” He beamed. Well, you can imagine the conversation at that point. A few days later we had our first date which didn’t end until sunrise and me crawling into my bed and offering him a guest bed. Really.

 A week later we were living together, and five weeks after that, he left for the Ashram with both of us in tears; him coming home on Thursday nights only to leave at 5 a.m. Monday mornings. The passion was non-stop and the love letters were several and daily since that first night in the diner. Yes, I got love letters while he was living with me. He left me love notes everywhere and we made love several times a day and all night long. At this point I was toast. I’ll admit in the beginning I wasn’t sure this was going to work. Maybe he needed me too much or maybe I was growing away from the guru stuff as he was just headed more deeply into it. Either way, we were at a turning point and I couldn’t bear his coming and going every week anymore, mostly his going. We agreed that he would leave Prasad August 1^st and come home to begin teaching at La Salle again and live with me. My Birthday is August 6^th, and on that day he took the kids and I to Valley Green and proposed on bended knee. I was tingling, happy beyond all of my sad years of longing for this kind of love to come into my life again, and I was the girl that those big brown eyes were staring into and so in love with. By Christmas he was gone.

It took me three years to get over him….three very rough, tear- filled, Ativan- filled years. What happened…does it matter? Not really. He was two years younger, I had 3 kids and he wasn’t ready for real life beyond young love…that and some more. So a few days before Christmas, he packed up, left us and moved into an apartment in Manayunk. I wish I could tell you I didn’t call and cry, begging him to come home, but I did. I hung on for fixes like some crazed love junky for over a year, until I begged God to take him far away from me because I wasn’t strong enough to save myself. He had more than broken my heart, it felt as if he’d actually taken it from me, leaving me some hollow achy version of my heart, a void, an amputation of soul, and I was willing to do anything to have him love me again. Yes, I had become that girl. I’d never been her before, but I knew what she looked like and I was now her. God finally took him to Maui and freed me. The withdrawal was an abyss of his smell, taste, touch and countless nights crying in the dark, wondering at what precise moment he stopped loving me, when he treated me as if I had meant less than a stranger to him. When all of the words had no meaning and all of the sacredness now mocked me.

I have been in love, deep amazing passionate love, six times in my life since I was 17. I cherish all that I have lived through and all that I have savored. Do I wish I’d never met him? I can’t say. I’ve stopped asking that question. I am in love now… he is a poet and a father; he is wonderful, beautiful, smart, sexy and filled with a childlike honesty about life that intrigues me endlessly. I don’t know if we’ll marry, that is another story, marriage, still I wonder as he and I fall asleep in each other’s arms, limbs wrapped around one another….his smell pressed into my soul already, his taste and warmth, all a part of me now. Will he one day be another memory…I pray not. Love does not last evidently, not all love anyway. I’ve held friends as they’ve rocked in pain of such great proportion over a lost lover and I’ve had to tell them what I’ve come to know, not something one can even fathom at that moment… “You will get over him one day, I whisper gently, you will be happy again, I promise.” Time wounds all heals as far as love goes and therein lies the risk… ah, but what a delicious ride.

A Safe Place~ Intro to my book

A Safe Place

Home.... a word that means so many things. Sometimes I feel it was my unquenchable thirst to find home that kept, that keeps me going. To feel safe, warm, loved, valued, needed and fiercely protected. There are certain things that bring with them a deep peace at the mere mention; crisp white sheets flapping in the wind on a clothesline, the rolling drum of the clothes dryer and the hiss of steam from an iron, butterflies floating on a gentle breeze, the moon and stars spilling light on my garden, wind chimes gently singing, an old wooden screen door that creeks as you open it and slams shut as you let it go! Glass jars of jam - still warm. Wind, the kind that comes out of nowhere just before a storm, revealing the underbelly of the leaves. The sound of our dog dragging her bowl across the kitchen floor with euphoric, anxious licks and coffee percolating, sending steamy kisses throughout the house. My babies giggling at bath time, the whooshing of water as it first takes flight from the summer hose line with gurgles and kicks. Fireworks on the 4th of July and fireflies that light up your backyard, popping out from the soft green grass on sweet summer nights. I love the symphony of cicadas as I fall off to sleep and the cool soil from my garden as it says hello to another day. And mostly, the sounds of my children as they stir around the house, not knowing that I'm listening. I hear them chat to each other and tell jokes and share their day with one another. I love the hopeful lift in my son's lip as he hands me a dead butterfly and says 'Mommy, can you fix it?"... But the most precious of these is the sound of my home tonight. All the people I love most, asleep, safe under this roof, in this home that we have built together. My children and husband all have a sweet sort of cub snore. I hear it when I lay close in bed every night beside him, and with every delicious nap I take with my babies, or upon gazing at them in their beds and cribs at night. Watching their stomachs rise and fall… rise and fall, lips quivering and fingers flinching. The faint sounds of the doves that have settled under our soffits and my grandfather clock that we found in an antique shop in New England. If the Universe has a sound for peace, this is its sound for me. This will forever now be its sound for me. And always in the background Sam will be in full sway on our tree tire swing, dusty black converse dangling, laughing back at me, calling me to play from wherever he is now.

When they fly away...

I spent the past several days paroozing Northern Liberties off Spring garden St. looking for an apartment for my daughter Sara. It's painful to write this...in the moment, as we shuffled from apt to apt, one cute to one, a horror of smells and serpentine wired back yards, I was able to detach the reality of what it meant to be walking through these rooms... somewhat. An odd bird of a realtor took us around on Saturday, she smelled of swedish fish and poo and said the most peculiar things which kind of had us in stitches after the showings. By days end, we had found"the place" and it was charming! It has three stories filled with character and warmth, beautiful windows, incredible cobalt tiled floor in the bathroom with brick faced walls, wood floors, a stellar kitchen filled with stainless everything, intercom for safety, huge rooms and from the living room window, a street sign that read, Hope Street. As I stood looking at the sign, I felt God offer a warm arm around my shoulder for comfort, maybe for stability too. My daughter nudged up beside me, staring out at the sign as well. A moment had arrived for us to stand together and feel the sweet and the sorrow without words. She will have a special plant for that windowsill that I have already rooted from our now ten year old basil plant on my kitchen counter top. It will sit on that windowsill in her new place and as she looks out at the Hope Street sign, I"ll be with her and so will that silent but profound moment we shared. I'm glad that I don't know how to let her go, that I don't need to know how, because I don't, and that's just that. I know the pain will be brutal and the missing her here in our home, in an everyday kind of way will be an amputation at times, but I will try to move past it or breathe through the moments as they come and go.I think, as a mother thinks, I won't hear her say "good night, I love you" to her brother anymore as I climb into bed, I won't know she is safely sleeping in her bed upstairs, and I will miss her funny nightly banter as she bounces in from work and plops on my bed, unlaoding an arsenal of stories about her day. So my sweet, brilliant, beautiful, exotic, principled and funny girl, I love you and you'd better come home for a weekly dinner. We'll be here waiting for you. Love, always, all ways, mom

don't forget how good sex is and how happy it makes you and your partner. Couples who have sex everyday live much richer and fuller lives.