beautiful bundle

“Can you believe I did this?” 

Wisdom from the cool lips of a new father.  Johnny — the baby of our family — the last one in a lineup of five in seven years led by me. 

Laid-back, life-of-the-party, steal-your-heart Johnny turned daddy at 41. 

“Wanna hold her?”

I shake my head, shrug my shoulders to say “Ooooh, I don’t know — I’m a little afraid.”

“Aw, come on — you can’t do anything to hurt her — she’s wrapped like a football.”

(She’s not the one I’m worried about.)

“Ok.”

I catch the easy pass from the quarterback in the room, albeit reluctantly.   I haven’t put myself in the position of holding a baby since — well — 

Since I let myself consider the probability that — I’d never hold one of my own.

But this is Johnny’s baby.  And what am I afraid of anyway? 

The beautiful bundle rests in my arms, her dreamy eyelids drawn down sweetly on her three-hour-old face.  When she stirs a tiny bit, I’m just a tiny bit alarmed.  But look at her, just look at her. 

She’s perfectly amazing, and yes, can I say it?

“I can believe you did this.”

success on the mtn

 

I start down the hill.

I feel the nippy air on my face.  On my way down I spot what seems to be a lost trail.  I ski in it deliberately.

The trees around me make a fence-like form as if protecting something in the forest.  I ride over jumps that look like turtle shells emerging from the bright ocean.

This is such a blast.  Suddenly I see something ahead, something big.  It’s a jump!

It looks more like a tiny mountain to me.  I start to go really slow.  I go up the jump, my tips about to lead me down when I slowly start to slide back down.  This causes a jam.  My friends and I all look like a clump of squirming snails. 

At last I go around the tiny mountain where I find another jump.  I gain speed, my face freezing more with every second that ticks by.  I shoot up into the air flying (more like flailing).  I land gracefully into the powdery snow below me. 

I ski down to the bottom and look up at the hill.  “Success” that’s what comes to my mind.  We all worked together and had fun.  That’s what I call success.

— written by mimi, age 12, rock star.

honor on edgecumbe

I never saw the kid’s face, but he stood like Ghandi. 

What I saw was a sure-footed figure in a blaze orange crossing guard vest in the center of a pushy punchy trippy clump of five or six other kids. 

Sticking out of one end of the multi-colored jacket mass was a long pole with a flag on it.  My eyes flew to a head thrown back in glee, clearly the leader of the attackers.  He tightened his grip on the protruding end of the pole and pulled away from the aggressive mass.  The ranks delivered blows to the school patrol’s arms, back and legs until their leader ran free with the prize, waving it high above his jeering lips.

The composed orange vest walked after him— the gang cheered and taunted him — and the lead tormentor teased him by pretending he was tired of the game, surrendering the equipment, then jerking it back. 

The white dove never budged. 

Watching the school patrol keep his cool, I wandered back in time to fifth grade and the inauguration of girls into the school patrol.  This was a big deal, and I was just like every girl who wanted to be chosen. 

Hey, these were bra burning days and my trainer was on fire.  

But alas — with my Mia Farrow Rosemary’s Baby pixie cut, horn-rimmed glasses and whispering bone thin frame — I was not among the six lucky pony tails selected to make history and stand in the cross walks that year.

Yesterday through adult eyes, the reasons were made perfectly clear to me. 

turn to mary

To my 5-year-old eyes, they were popsicle sticks with a higher purpose.

A big pile of popsicle sticks with strips of first aid tape on each end.  The tape held the sticks on Grandma’s scrunched up toes during the day.  When we got ready for bed at night, I watched her take the sticks off and put them back where they belonged — in a washed out Skippy Peanut Butter jar — or maybe it was an empty Folger’s Coffee can.  

Even at five, I understood how pain and hope were woven together in this ritual. 

Her toes were “drawn up by polio,” she said, and this agonizing exercise with the splints was intended to straighten them out.  She was hopeful about being able to make things better and this encouraged her to endure huge stretches of pain. 

Hers has been a life of enduring pain — with hope — and, without complaint.

Which is why we can hardly bear it today.  To watch her endure chronic neck pain on top of a non-mobile and sightless existence.  Now, without a shred of hope that it will ever be gone.  That she will ever feel better.  And still.

Beneath her sunken eyes and face, hollowed out by steep cheek bones, I feel her reaching out to give her love to me.  There is a knowing about her that transcends physical pain and deterioration and I am comforted by her presence.   

The Holy Rosary on channel 19 is concluding as I lean over to stroke her face and hair and kiss her good-bye.  This is the season of the Sorrowful Mysteries and we’ve been reminded that it is Mary who is associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of the redemptive suffering of Jesus. 

I turn to Mary and ask for her maternal support and comfort during this time of suffering for Grandma Trudi.

I turn to Mary.

true love 4

True love

Offers transfiguration

Inviting us

Daring us

Begging us

To stand naked

Before the one

We adore

At the moments we

Fear most we will

Not be heard

Or not be accepted

True love beckons

But it cannot, will not force

It weeps

Over lost chances

But stands firm

When lovers take cover

The shallow breathing

And gentle tears of

True love surround

The hurt ones

And wait as

Only true love

Has the patience

To wait

For another chance.

© Julie Stevens 2003

true love 3

True love

Is a beautiful story

That never ends

Always engaging

Holding interest

In the question marks

The unknown, the yet to be revealed

True love

Compels us to

Turn the pages

Over a lifetime

Of unwinding moments

We laugh we cry we run

From the feelings we fight

Gently putting it down

Or carelessly tossing it aside

Always to pick it up

And again with

Faith and courage

Read on.

© Julie Stevens 2002

true love 2

True love

Deepens with the

Passage of time

Through distance

And silence,

It stays on the wings

Of each lover’s dreams

Emerges in the

Quiet corners of surrender

A warm soothing hand

That asks nothing

Needs nothing

Exists in spite of

And because of

Cannot be willed into being

Or wished away

True love simply is

Is the air we breathe without thinking

The sun that warms but does not burn

The loose embrace that holds fast

While setting free

True love dances only

When it is time

And not before

It comes without being called

And its presence lights

The darkest solo crossings

True love

The love of changed lives

And new hearts

Cannot, will not

Be ignored

It gives confidently

Expecting nothing in return

And its greatest reward is the act of loving.

© Julie Stevens 2001

true love 1

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I post my “true love” series which includes four poems I wrote between 2000 and 2003.  At the time I wrote these I was trying to answer the question “how do you know when love is true?”  Joining true with love seems redundant to me today. 

If it is indeed love, then of course it is true.

True love

Does not wait

Does not hesitate

It moves confidently

Gently urgently

Into the night

Whispers the truth

In the quiet chambers

Of the heart

Sings as a child

Uninterrupted without reservation

And the world’s greatest lovers

Dance to its voice

True love is

Unforced unformed

Unimagined before its arrival

Immediately consumed

And celebrated on its first meeting

True love

The love of changed lives

And miraculous beginnings

Cannot, will not

Be ignored

It is the ceaseless beckoning

The playful knocking

On the window of one’s mind

That keeps one awake

Into the new day

Breathless with the anticipation

Of one with whom life

Is no longer conceivable without.

 

© Julie Stevens 2000

high noon vertigo

The white opens its mouth and swallows me whole.  

I feel along the floor of its wide belly with the bottoms of my feet and pole tips while my eyes register nothing but blinding flat whiteness. 

I am a tiny feather floating above a place I no longer recognize.  No sense of time or space.  Weightless.  Riding gentle waves of true calm.

My body turns and the wind bats it.  Fumbling to recover, I spin and blur in an unknown direction. 

 Free fallin with my mind unhooked.

Seconds after a soft landing, my eyes still probing, I am surprised to feel the mountain behind me.  When I stand, I lose my balance.  Drunk dizzy.  Pitching downhill, I lock my knees and clench my fists.  Slam my eyes shut to make it go away. 

A deep breath later the rest of my party reaches me.  Our frozen lips mouth “this — scares — me” together.  We tighten ranks and keep moving. 

Soon enough, it’s time to laugh again.

can’t do it justice

I’m apt to point my lens at just about anything I find visually interesting on the off chance that it will take on some significance when I view it later — either when sorting through stacks of photos I’ve taken and printed, or browsing through folders on my computer.

But there are exceptions.

And today was one of them.

Some things in life are meant to create awe in the moment, imprint their majesty once, and be revisited only in dreams.

White frosted trees against the bluest of skies and your friends’ smiles at the end of an epic Buddy’s Run.

Dream on.