And other recollected wisdom from the day heaven kissed earth. These two thousand words are from the hand and heart of Tracey.
And just because, leave your name in a comment, plus a way to reach you by email, and I’ll draw for a gift subscription to my literary patron, the Shambhala Sun magazine. Winner drawn next Friday, Oct. 23, rain or shine.
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The other night I stepped into the living room to deliver the announcement: Timetobrushyourteethwashyourfaceitsbedtime! My husband and daughter were watching an ancient baby video, one of the ones we haven’t watched in, oh, nine years or so, a dozen obsolete formats ago.
We were starstruck.
She was not yet two. We watched her waddle in circles around the lemon tree, and then repeat a circuit around the yard, climbing the steps over and over, little feet sailing, arms flailing, head tucked and hell-bent on a mission called growing up.
She stood in sunken, soggy diapers twirling her goldilocks curls and rubbing her bedtime eyes.
She danced in a loopy bounce to grandpa’s ragtime piano, bathed in a spotlight of self-immersion and propulsion.
She emptied her first Halloween bag piece by piece, cooing a drooling baby talk of approval, chirping a drunken birdsong of eees and opps and umms that we understood perfectly.
I said to my 10-year-old, “Now do you see why we love you so much?”
Everything seen and unseen. Heard and unheard. Known and unknown. The confusion, the fear, the fatigue, the worry, the doubt. The rage, the gulf, the hurt, the tears, lonely sleepless anxious terribleness, all of it, the ugly underside of it, and the unwrapped rosy red yummy of baby’s first bobbypop. It’s all love.
My sweet lord. Every bit love.
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August feels like a lost month. Slow boiled, a pot left on the burner and forgotten until a quicksilver memory sends you back to find it pitch darkened and empty.
And so my daughter, my sweet little, is 10. It is different at 10, you know. That extra digit on one side. The roundedness of zero. The empty whole of it.
“I don’t want to grow up,” she sighs on every day but her birthday today, when she didn’t say it. She doesn’t need to say it. It is the lyric we all live our lives by, and now she does too. The going is always gone.
Once I would have called it bittersweet. But I don’t taste too much the bitter any more. It benefits us both that her mother is ancient, so long and well-lived. I’ve lived forever! A hundred years or more, and the last hundred years were the best 10 years of my life.
I don’t want to grow up either. I don’t want to expend a minute of energy nursing myself: my make believe dreams and unrealized aspirations, the tug, the rift, the tides. I don’t want to become anyone else, or even more of myself. I’ve yielded that floor, scuffed and rutted.
Instead, I’ll take the sky. That sky!
Happy birthday baby girl. The world is yours.
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1. How old do you have to be to be a preteen?
2. This is definitely my color.
3. This is definitely not my color.
4. Awesome.
5. I wish you would have talked to me about it first, Mom.
6. Because I mean, like, it’s my life, you know.
7. I’m just not that into it.
8. Random.
9. Do you think I can pull this look off?
10. When are you joining Twitter?
OK, that last one wasn’t her. It was me.
So, like, why don’t you follow me on Twitter? Because it’s like my life, you know, only I’m not going anywhere!
Half-life: The time required for something to fall to half its initial value
Last week my nine-year-old was in the chorus at what was billed as an All Stars Concert for 60 kids in a summer theater program.
Just do the math and you know that 60 kids can’t All be Stars but try selling that to the kids or their parents who paid admission.
The day before the show, she fairly exploded with expectation. Then show time came. We couldn’t see her in the second row of 60 kids sing her heart out, but we know she did a fine job. Walking to the car after, she said, “I’m depressed.” Stardom will do that, apparently. The high lasts through one rendition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” before you’re slammed back to the hard pavement of the parking lot, as we see so painfully time after time.
I mean no insult to my daughter, or anyone else’s ambition, but our cult of stardom, this collective craving for instant inflation, the plucked-from-obscurity-to-overnight-hysteria thing, has me vaguely ill, as though I’ve been overfed.
We seem to have become sensation junkies. Each week a new sensation goes viral, whether it’s astonishment à la Boyle, grief à la Jackson, or this week’s cherry on top, the wedding dance being sensationalized for its “novel way of sharing matrimonial joy.”
Everyone puts on a good show. Indeed, All are Stars.
But gravity always has the last word. The simple cruelty of physics brought Susan Boyle swiftly low and likewise ensured that Michael would never rise to the occasion. I too, feel depressed, after I blow up ballooning expectations that inevitably blow up.
Now we have newlyweds that have reached, within a month of their nuptials, a summit that will surely never be scaled again. Two Today Show appearances in two days. Perhaps next they’ll be invited to have a beer at the White House. I know a thing or two about marriage, and this honeymoon would be hard for any ordinary couple to recover from.
Most of us have never seen anything like it, but there’s a veritable YouTube subgenre of choreographed wedding dances out there, the couples spreading their ambition for matrimonial joy by breaking into breakdance and hip hop, then posting it on YouTube just for friends and family. Tell me: are you surprised? These plucky couples and their videos feed the diet of morning news shows which are front and center in the televised wedding business. Weddings are already afflicted with an increasingly outrageous need to trump all. Don’t you know thousands, maybe millions, of betrotheds are now scrambling to top a new bar in the wedding-as-viral-video department?
When did we stop seeing the obvious? Viruses make us sick, and can even kill.
I hope Georgia picks herself up and keeps going for the love of performing. I hope Susan Boyle endures for the love of song. I hope the happy couple stays together in anonymity and health, as I wish for all couples. And I hope Michael Jackson rests in eternal peace.
As for me, I’m going away to a place where I can practice spreading another kind of sensation: obscurity.
Don’t worry, you’re safe. It’ll never go viral.
I feel brave when I’m performing
It is the color of confidence
And it feels like magic
This is a page in Georgia’s art journal she made as part of the Mini-Mermaid art e-camp this summer. She made it right before she auditioned for a part in a play last week when she was beaming pure gold and glitter like the color of confidence.
She didn’t get the part she tried for. She didn’t get any part she tried for. They gave her the part of a boy. This seems to be a recurring tragedy in her life drama. She cried for a day, and for two nights she wore sponge curlers to bed so she could convince the director, too late, that she is a girl like the girls they cast.
But she feels brave when she’s performing. She’s decided she likes her part. She’s having fun, surrounded by friends, intoxicated by the 190-proof enthusiasm that is the stage life. Watching her dive, and dip and swim to the surface again, I’ve decided that I like her part too. It’s called Georgia, and like magic, she can be anything.
I think this camp looks fun because I love art and drawing. In this camp a video is given once a week to give you the theme of an artbook page. We then make a whole artbook by ourselves. Flickr photos of your drawings will be posted for those who want to share. I want to do it because I love art and because I want to have other friends all over the world I can share it with. During the summer my mom usually says “Get off the computer right now!” or “Don’t even think about turning on the TV!” but this way I can do my art and connect with my new art friends. I’m gonna do it this summer. How about you?
Yours,
Georgia G. Miller
little girls changing the world from mccabe russell on Vimeo.
Georgia is signed up as a mini-mermaid art e-camper this summer with the one and only dancing mermaid and we have an even bigger mess in store with one full camp tuition to give away to another girl age 8-13 (or younger, or older!) The camp runs all summer so you can start anytime and count Georgia G. Miller among your best art friends in the whole world. I’m tellin’ ya, she’s devoted to her worldwide web of friends. Leave a comment here, with a way to reach you, and give your girl a chance to show her stuff this summer. Winner to be drawn and announced sincerely by Georgia G. Miller next Wednesday, June 17 on her last day of school. Look out world!
Winner: Georgia picked Shanna. Congratulations!
As a farewell to backpedaling Mercury, whose retrograde ends this Saturday, thereby closing reopened chapters and resolving unfinished business, awkward pauses and anxious backward glances, I offer this parting remembrance of last year’s fire:
We evacuated the house yesterday, probably the last people to be evacuated, because as soon as we drove away the mountain cooled to a wispy simmer and they started letting folks return. We had already loaded up a week’s worth of clothes, assorted papers, dusty photo albums and baby videos, the dog and the dog crate, with the potholders, yes those very potholders, at the bottom of the suitcase. That talisman alone probably turned history on its heels.
And for the record, as Georgia swept through her room choosing those few things she would rescue, she donned her pink Disneyland cap and her Girl Scout vest. She strode out bedecked with badges and pins, under a pair of mouse ears. That precious glimpse of who she is, who she is right now, was proof enough that there’s no need – ever – to look back.
***
My 400th post. Proof enough of the wonders ahead.
Originally published on April 29, 2008 as my 200th post.
Another spring.
Another carnival.
Another gallon of distilled water every week.
Introducing Zippy and Bubbles.
Newly installed and counting the days in this life everlasting.
A morning memorial.
Photo by Georgia Miller
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Last night at a neighborhood party, my daughter and her nine-year-old friends put on a show that was shocking and lewd.
I was embarrassed and alarmed.
Frank Rich’s column in the Times includes this fact “more than 60 percent of Twitter users abandon it after a single month.”
I’m still afraid the future will sail without me.
On speakerphone so we could wish her a happy mother’s day, my mother-in-law asks, “What will your mommy do today?” My daughter says, “Exercise and write by herself.” My mother-in-law replies, “Doesn’t she do that everyday?”
I never know where she’s coming from.
Wish Studio posted this essay describing my creative process, which seems like a misnomer. My output is painstaking and small but I get a big kick out of looking the part.
Break the bottle, make a space and let it be.
I’m off for a three-day retreat at my practice home starting tonight, because this silent spaciousness is where all stories begin and end.
Before I leave I want to share some recent inspiration.
First, the Shambhala Sun has reposted my piece on the Dharma of Barbie. Even after you think you’ve tossed her, the old girl never dies. And there’s always a new generation of parents for her to haunt. If you scroll down to the end of the story, you’ll see the announcement that I’ll soon be launching a blog on their site named after the stuff that is always near to my heart. Once I sort the lights from the darks, we’ll see what comes out of it. Leave a comment over there and let them know that I’m not just full of suds.
This column in the New Yorker snapped, crackled and popped my eyes open earlier this week. It’s a fascinating look that could leave you wondering about how much you’re willing to commit to yourself during troubling times.
Speaking of troubles, I was touched by this letter to fellow practitioners. Not just because the need is urgent and the time is now, but because of the sheer delight in seeing that, even to a Rinpoche, practice is just pretense. We must all pretend harder!
Lastly, I was so moved by Cam’s reflection on loss. It reminds me that the why that has no answer is the very why we keep going, and that love and loss are never separate.
And just for a parting grin, this snippet of conversation two days ago over a sleeping dog.
Mom, you know what I’ve figured out?
What’s that?
A well-trained dog isn’t that much fun.
Why not?
Because you don’t get to wrestle it, and have trouble with it. You don’t get to be mad at it.
I see.
So a well-trained dog isn’t the best kind.
You think?
If we ever get a new puppy can we name it Squiggly or Wiggly?
I’m going to share this with you because, well, she said it.
Dad, what do you do when you are at work and you are done with your work?
I keep working.
No, I said when you are done with your work.
I’m never done with my work.
Pooh! That’s no fun.
