Motherless? Never.

In the tiny black and white photo I keep in my mom's old jewelry box, Richard looks like a short Peter Sellers. Richard was a small man, my grandma confirms, smart as a whip and capable of handling any task, from cleaning a dove he'd shot to arguing both sides of a political issue at a party.

Peter Sellers, my grandpa's doppelganger

You could say my mom was fatherless at a young age. Richard, her father, died when she was ten. You could say I was motherless at a relatively young age, too. By the time I was 19, I knew my mom wouldn't be around to celebrate my buying my first home or being granted tenure. You could say that these things are tragedies.

It ain't easy when we experience losses that go against "the natural order." The death of a child or the loss of a parent at a young age is not a walk in the park. Recently, I had to put my 14 year-old cat, Lily, to sleep. Although my mom initially rebelled against my idea of bringing this white cat home ("Think of all the white hair over your purple furniture!), she immediately fell in love. When I went on trips around the world, Lily would curl up with her foster mother. When I had to surrender that cat's life, it felt like I was cutting yet another string that connected me to my mother.

But is it really true that those who have lost parents are really motherless, fatherless? What does it mean when a parent dies?

I had dinner and a lovely walk with a friend of my mom's recently. As the sun began to set, the frogs by the river started croaking their rusty evening songs. We talked about getting older, teaching, and raising children (this includes pets, of course :-).

That night, I had one of those "Oh, now I get it!" dreams that shed light on one of those issues that has held you captive for years. In the dream, I was sitting at my grandmother's counter top, looking at the spot on the stove where my grandma usually stood as my brother and I ate our dinners. Instead of my grandma in the kitchen, though, it was Richard, the grandfather I never knew except for memories told and retold by my mother and grandmother, tied to the tiny black and white photo.

"It's OK your grandma got remarried," Richard said. From his quiet and sweet demeanor, I knew who he was immediately. "I'm glad she had a stepfather, someone to take care of her and give her brothers and a sister. And I'm glad you had a grandfather."

I awoke from the dream stunned. I am careful to write down dreams that seem like they might have something to offer, and I hastily jotted it down.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a mother, to be mothered. I think I've been working these past few years to understand that I'm OK without a mother. I'm trying to accept that it's OK that I've found ways to be mothered--and to mother--even without her lovely presence. I think one of the hardest parts about the healing process after someone dies is to begin to be alright with the fact that you're going to get that love elsewhere. But I don't think we should worry about that. The human heart is vast enough to preserve a space for those we've lost while making room for new opportunities for love.

So when a female friend pays for my glass of white wine and cheeseburger after an evening of laughter and tears, or when another friend envelops me in a random embrace after noticing my long face, I accept it: I'm still being mothered.

On Crocodiles, Carp, and Cowardice

I'm going to blog about a topic that is usually the death of conversation and writing everywhere: a dream. No, it's not a cool aspiration for the future or hope for humanity. It's about what little movie my brain ran when I was asleep last night.

Stay with me! I promise there are profound realizations ahead. OK, well, probably, there won't be much of that. But there will be crocodiles!

They say that dreams are a way of processing. We process a monotonous day's events (I dream of grading papers. Seriously). Sometimes, they're epic. We use them to relieve stress and make sense of the world. Sometimes, we use 'em to force ourselves to face the yucky stuff buried in the backs of our minds.

Last night, after a pretty rough day, I had one of those dreams I will take to the grave. Especially now that I blogged about it :-)

I dreamed I was in the middle of a gorgeous lake. There were hilly, lush mountains around, and I was paddling in the middle of it with a friend. Instead of a boat, we had a shack. The shack, crumbling, mossy, and falling apart, began to sink as we paddled to shore. My friend and I looked around and saw hideous carp and crocodiles swimming about.



Really cool shack



But instead of being scared of being eaten alive or drowning, we just laughed. I tell you, I haven't had such a lovely dream in months. I found beauty in the scales of the crocodiles and carp. The trees dotting the shorelines and the closeness I felt with my friend overshadowed the fear of drowning. And that shack was just freakin' cool.

Isn't this just like life? Isn't this just like yoga? We're paddling as hard as we can to a shore that's impossibly far away. And we're surrounded by horrible things in a vessel we didn't predict we'd use. That's what our experiences are always like, right? We didn't choose our bodies, our towns, or our families. Heck, even the things we "choose"--jobs, friends, and soulmates--can seem oddly imposed upon us by forces beyond our control.

But life isn't lived in the absence of fear. We don't have to react cowardly. The opportunity to obsess on the scary stuff--the crocodiles, the standing backward bends, whatever pose puts the fear of God in you--will always be there. Maybe the point is to just paddle on, knowing full well we could drown on our way to the shore. So long as we can enjoy that moment with a friend and appreciate the funky moss growing on our little shack, what's the difference?

There are always going to be rough, scary days. And there's always the option of staring that scary stuff right down and loving it to its scaly bones.