here and now with them

they're here.  they are each taking their showers and getting ready for their day.  we will go to lafayette in the immediate future and he will go to BAM practice and she and i will go to the library.  she'll do her homework.  i'll read my book for school.  so funny--the life i gave up to live the life i've lived--and the return to this kind of joy--this kind of rich and beautiful joy of simply being with them.  we eat junk food when we're together.  we sit in one place and be within the orbits of each other.  my nervous system is balanced by their presence.  every thing seems right with the world.  but.... and.... life is but a dream.  i notice.  the dream of them when we're together--and the joys we share--and the laughter and the stories.  i miss watching them come alive in their simplicity--their unfolding--like watching the roses bud and grow off the patio that has been foreclosed upon.  like the ants and the mites--like the life that feeds upon the life.  we lit a candle and burned it all the way out last night.  we watched the whole life of the flames rise up and dance as we let ourselves fall deeper into dreams.  we found our time and our timing.  we took our long walk across the length of the island.  the width is easily done.  what is it i have been doing? trying to do? proving? trying to prove? that can not be done by attending to these creatures? they are each such beautiful examples of putting themselves together.  yesterday, my boy child, freshly quaffed head, went back to the barber that took his hair and let him shave the excess with a straight razor.  i watched as the tatooed man took care to lather the face of my child, and pull the sharp edge of the knife up, against the grain of his growing hair, and carve an exquisite line.  it is something--to watch and love this moment.  i couldn't at first.  at first i could just walk the forgotten hallway.  next to the out of place barber shop--all graffittied and tatooed--hidden in the bowls of a walnut creek shopping center off the main of main streets, was a wig shop full of post masectomy pleasures.  i considered my no longer bald head.  i considered the millimeters turning into centimeters growing like a thick black mold (though not slimy in any way) (but no longer spiky either).  this mold is growing out of my head.  this length of dead skin cells doing their growing thing.  i can still rub up against the edges of the hardest parts to cut--but i can feel the softness settling in.  i can feel the smooth wanting to smooth everything out.  my lipstick, still red, is starting to bleed out of the tight container of the line of my lips.  i am more and more and more and more scary clown looking each day.  it is fine, i say to myself--because when i am with my children--and they seem to agree to be with me more--everything feels right in this world.  i am mother identified.  i identify as mother.  being a mother to my own children--this is the thing i feel best and worst doing.  i feel, always, that i exist, as a mother, to give them something interesting to say in therapy.  i feel, always, that i exist, as their mother, to witness their unfoldment, to offer them shelter, to continue to be a presence they can consult or rub up against or fight at will.  it is important to have something to fight against, i suppose--to prove right or wrong--to endeavor to learn.  i consider these things.  i consider the ways these things fold and unfold.  i consider these taking outs and putting aways.  i consider these children--most precious.  and all the things i have done by myself of my own accord to limit my availability to them.  it is strange, coming to this moment here in my now.  it is strange and wonderful and tender and real and precious and encouraging and full of angst.  we will be ready to go soon.  we will go out into our day and the time between us will elapse and then i will return to this space we have made so alive with our aliveness and i will want to move everything around.  i will want to change the nature of the energy that will linger here as a hauntingly good time.  i will want to change it--so i can be in the now that is then without missing the now that is now.