the arms of summer
the late summer rest, do you feel it, too? a small peace after days of broiling heat, outdoor plants crispy from the sun, birds and squirrels hibernating from the intensity of June July August days.
and now a respite, an almost unnoticeable tinkling pause in the rush to bloom and expand, in the sling of summer's ease before her eventual fade into autumn. it feels too ethereal, too beautiful, shameful to draw out with words, but there is an unmistakable finger on the lips. the ball caught in mid-air before its descent. a pendulum at its peak before the return. that one moment. that one. that one. that one.
this is time best described by memory as poignant longing. years ago when i, belly swollen and tight, loose sundress, August in Portland, hung tiny tie-dyed onesies on the line to dry in anticipation of my baby girl, Alma. later, i ingested trillium and castor oil, walking endless trips, rocking my baby down. but no baby. i watched the sun bend back over the sky and declared each swipe to be "god's day". the trickle of water from a hose, the scamper of a cat, the soft petals falling off the wild rose bush, falling, falling. 30 hours, was it more... or less? i slept and hallucinated and flailed and gave up and gave in through wild woman contractions, fever flooding my body, falling into my own mother's arms. that baby BOY finally finally ripped his way through my unsure body, emerging and sliding out into the bright open hospital air, twenty of us standing guard to help usher him into the new day. him perfect and gasping and grey, eyes closed. Flailing into space. he reached out with both baby hands to anchor himself on the first thing that his baby fingers could meet and firmly wrapped them around the stainless steel utensil of the medical trade, little fingers intertwined so tightly around that it took three adults to pry him away. And then he was free.
Alma. that one moment and I actually laughed at the absurdity of it all. that one moment. then the golden drops of the first milk that I saved while he waited in ICU. Somehow his breathing tube had been punctured, probably a mistake by one of the OSHU students attending this birth, this teaching hospital while suctioning out his lungs. we were all so tired. Even the midwife was on her third coffee trembling to make stitches. Baby Boy Lombardo wore a soft cap in robin's eggs blue. I found his name there. Two days later he was Home. the slow days of endless nursing began, from the crook of my right arm to left and back again until tiny lips parted even then dreaming of that sweet nectar.
just like that, with my one immortal finger i turned and flicked mother earth to spin on her axis, my baby he smells just like me. milk, lavender, cedar, ripe plums, crisp leaves, joy and despair.
each year in summer's sling of late August, I feel the song gently surrounding the world, a vortex of time and emotion takes me from my body mind and places me firmly back into earth's fine rhythms. stories, poems, myths, legend, angels, all take their shape. this is the blink, the grasp, the veil. the kiss, the mother's wet whisper to pause and settle ever deeper into the crook of her freckled loving arm. Her song is repeating over and over in my heart. amen.
the melancholy emerges. i know there is no going back to bright afternoons of shiny faces hiding from the shimmering heat, june rosebuds, and dreams of pink onesies on the clotheslines. we are headed, my dear, only and inevitably toward the fine mist of fall and then to the season of death. all of us. and that is what the pause sings. we have come for you. not now, but soon. this rest, this bubble of space and time will not protect you forever. but for now, you are safe in your mother's arms.