Lucid

Luminous, bright, easy to understand. Incongruous words to describe dreams of tidal waves that crash in my mind night after night. Sometimes I'm the survivor who shouldn't have been, and the ocean wells up once more from sculpted rock to reclaim me. Sometimes we're in a building and I race to safety. Each time, water lingers in my lungs when I wake, cold clings to fingers and toes like second skin.

Luminous. The light that filters through a wall of water is anything but. Why the dreams return is a mystery. Yes, I'm aware it's just a dream, not a nightmare, and I can control what I do. But if having control of one's actions were the only requisite for understanding, how do we explain the millions of stupid things supposedly awake, lucid people do each day?

I wish there were a better word for these dreams. One I could remember and use, preferably before coffee, when my family asks why I woke up the way I did. And I wish there were bright answers to the question that drip-drips in the back of my mind all day: If I let the water take me there, what will I wake to here?

The only way out is through

Sometimes I wake up early* to work. It's when I get my best writing done. Today I sat with my coffee, and fidgeted with worry-beads of problems until I'd sorted them out in my head. Nothing to do with writing, just the stuff of life that's been getting in the way of the work that needs to get done. By 5 am--two hours after my alarm--I'd come up with the perfect solutions to two nagging issues, and about 3 sentences. But now that I've puzzled it all out, my brain is clear to write again. So, a note to myself: sometimes I need to dedicate the best part of my day to worrying, because only then can my brain get back to work. 

*Early is questionable- some consider 2 or 3 am the middle of the night. I'm not one of them. 

On being beautiful

Yesterday a particularly lovely friend and I spent a long while discussing self-care, skin care, and society's standards for women. I spent years coating my face with bleach, peels that burnt my flawed skin off, facials and creams and who knows what else. I'd do anything for good skin. Now my hands are so full they're forced away from the old scars. And I couldn't care less.

I look at my husband, and I look at our child, and I think back now and then to the times I was told I could never have this sort of love because of the marks on my skin and the size of my hips. And I hope some insecure teenager looks at my face and thinks: if she can have it, so can I. When I told her this, she said: "Aww, you're beautiful."

That's always been my reaction to her. Although we commiserate often over our skin woes, I rarely see the spots. I look at her, and I see nothing but beauty, nothing but warmth and intelligence.

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. And perhaps this is the secret to it: Surround yourself with those who see you as such, scars and all. Seek to see the loveliness in others, no matter their size. What better way to remain beautiful, inside and out?

Essays in parenting

My finger hovers over the mute button, poised to push at the hint of a scream from downstairs. It's my favorite music playing, the melody that makes me solve whatever writing mess I'm currently in. I play this when I need to push through, a musical spell that protects my working mind. Today, I hit pause for my daughter's voice. And I wonder:

If there will ever be a time so simple that I can reclaim 9:54 minutes all to myself again.
If there is a self that can be contained so neatly within this rhythm.
If my mind will always remain half broken-open to this new voice.
If clarity of thought and parenting must always be at odds.

I hit pause. After changing a diaper, I click the little arrow that circles back around. And once more I begin to try.