I don't know how we spent the morning. The day before, we'd gone to the farmer's market, which is called the tailgate market, and bought chorizo breakfast tacos and lemon chess pies. We'd seen our new neighbors and new friends, walked around looking at the tomatoes and squash and corn, which we didn't need to purchase, because our neighbors had been leaving them on our doorstep regularly. It seems that everyone here grows gardens, and grows them with great success, western North Carolina being a rain forest, a fertile crescent, where I am told one can grown nearly anything. I want to grow coffee beans. I want to wear a panama hat and cradle green coffee beans for roasting in my soil-covered hands, but look, there goes my movie self again. Not me. Never me.

I probably cleaned the house, or laid listless in bed with a book. I am easily overwhelmed. The weight of the day's tasks often crush me and I curl up in bed, happy and hating myself by turns. I don't remember, but in the afternoon we got in the car and drove a direction that might have been north to Asheville, where Noah was flying in to see us for the first time since we'd moved, four weeks before. As we drove, the valley opened up and I could see the sky. Everywhere was green. We were bouncing with excitement. We were minutes from the airport when Noah texted to say his plane had been delayed in Charlotte and he didn't know when another flight would leave.

Since moving to Brevard four weeks ago, all the vestiges of my former life had vanished, washed away by the daily torrential rain. All the places I knew were fifteen-hundred miles away. The landscape had changed like an old-time theater prop and all my routines with it. All the people I knew. The places I used to drive to and past, the place we used to go for coffee, for beers, for a quick dinner. The faces I used to see around town, the parents at school drop off, the sounds of the neighborhood, the hue of the sky. My husband was gone and for four weeks I had lived as a single mother, making friends alone, going to parties alone, arriving at strangers' houses invited but alone. Everything was changed and it is no wonder, no wonder I lost my sense of self.

So you won't blame me for what I did next. I spoke to Siri, oracle to my slouching Odysseus, and she guided me to Starbucks. The girls asked for a "Frakking-cino" and I indulged them. I ordered a chai and we parked in the shade of a maple tree and pushed all the doors open. Just an hour later, my movie self would arrive to pick up Noah in white lace and aviators and Noah's movie self would tell me how proud he was of everything I'd done, alone in the forest. In reality the sight of him would bring tears to my eyes. Tears that were happy and releasing a bit of the strain that had been keeping me up at nights and waking me at dawn.

But first, while we were waiting, Ayla climbed into the front seat. Two days before, I had walked out my front door and smelled that gorgeous soft-apple scent of fall. Now the breeze that blew our hair to our faces was teasing and cool, and the light filtered rich and golden through the trees. Everything different than the day before. Do you feel that? I said to Ayla.

She closed her eyes and scented like a lioness. "Mmmm," she sighed, so deeply content. "It makes me feel like everything good is going to happen."

Before We Turn To Stone

"A heart that is open to the world must be willing to be broken at any time." Stephen Cope

Last week I spent two days in the hospital with my grandmother as she was dying.

Not so much time, really, but when you are in a room with a dying person--their labored, halted breath, their far-away eyes--time passes differently.

My emotions were cycling.

From tears to happiness to one moment of red-faced, gasping laughter in the hallway of the oncology ward with my sister

tears streaming down our faces as we let out explosive, inappropriate laughter.

After the second night, I arrived home late and I was so exquisitely grateful. So grateful to fall bone-tired into my soft bed at the end of a long day, knowing I would rise from it in the morning.

So grateful that morning to step into a hot shower, for the gift of movement in my limbs, the gift of water on my skin, the feeling of my own fingers massaging bright minty body wash into my sunny, freckled arms. My strength, my egregious vitality, my freedom to do as I willed:

to walk to the window and gaze out at the lilacs

to brew a scalding coffee and sweeten it with cream

to sit on the patio, feel the sun on my face, smell the sweet and dusty florals in the air

all things the dying cannot do.

On Saturday morning I sat up in bed, not weary at the thought of a day alone with the girls but with such lightness in my chest, such apple happiness. I rose from bed smiling, the thought in my mind that I couldn't wait to walk down the hall and see them, sleepy in the sun. My beautiful, beautiful daughters.

We spent some time talking to the hospice nurses.

These women (they are almost exclusively women) who care for the dying in their final days say the most fascinating things.

One of them told us she believes a certain agreement must be made

that the spirit of the dying must soften, and open,

(this is how they bloom, the flowers)

and say yes

yes, now I will go on.

In those few days I felt softer

like fluttering petals in my beating heart

as if all my membranes had thinned and agreed to allow all the light and all the stunning beauty of this world to stream in

morning light through crimson glass

which means letting in all the love, and all the pain as well.

Sometimes I fight so terribly with my daughters.

Sometimes I get annoyed with people who believe differently than me.

Sometimes when another person is soft, I want to reach across and place my hand over their mouth

can I bear, to see this part of you

and ask them not to be so vulnerable

not to expose us both for bruising.

And I wonder if learning to love is like this:

teaching the heart to stay open to invasions and pain

asking it to say yes, again and again, to the spirits of others.

By doing this, do we finally learn

that no one can hurt us the way we feared they can?

I don't know if it's all right to say this but lately I think

that the dying of old ones is a gift.

By witnessing their journey

their agreement

to open in all the soft, fluttering places, and let go

they teach those of us who remain

that there is not one moment on this earth that isn't precious

I stirred rosemary and garlic into aromatics and I nearly wept.

Until we see the dying, can we know how to truly live?

I want to know how you learned to love.

I know it is too much to ask.

Full Bloom Days

Yesterday I sat at Starbucks so long the baristas offered me free sustenance. "We made a mistake, but you look like you could use this," said the young man singled out to approach me. He set a passion tea on my table and backed away slowly, like the wrong move might make me cry, off with his head. I wondered how I must look, pale skin, glazed wonder in my eyes. The laptop zombies, they drive me crazy. Mainly when when I can't find a place to sit because of them. But yesterday, I was one.

Maybe I will go back to school and be an English professor, I said to myself the other day. It was raining in L.A. but it was almost 80 here, making mockery of all my dreams. I was sitting in my backyard and reading a book about just that, about an English professor, about doctorates and discussions of love. That did it to me, that always does. I want bao and green tea ice cream, I'll say to Mr. V, and Mr. V knows I've been reading Lisa See.

So maybe I will do this instead, I said to the universe. She just smiled back. Go ahead and try, she said. I won't stop you.

But the truth we knew was this. I am not an English professor, or a magazine editor, or a 911 operator or any of the other occupations I entertain on warm spring days. I'm not a blogger either, something I realized when reading this post by you know who, my favorite blogger, who realizes she is not a writer of books, not now anyway. I am not a blogger, it is not my calling, it was a relief to recognize it.

Which does not mean I am going to quit blogging. But I had neglected my work, momentarily. Stopped editing, stopped writing, and so this week I've gone back to it, like I hope I always will. I am telling stories. I am struck by Ayla, who is seven. My mind recites the only times table it ever memorized: Seven, fourteen, twenty-one. I feel overwhelmed some days, driving from the grocery store, sitting at Starbucks and frightening the baristas, with happiness. There were times in my twenties when I was so unhappy, so restless, such a stranger in my life. 7, 14, 21, Ayla marches on and so do I, but I am so lucky, my sun-dappled life a thing of dreams, I am doing what I want, what I feel I am meant to do and some days I feel I'm getting younger. The days pass maybe not in straight lines but in circles, or moons, regressing, fulfilling, full bloom. My soul grows lighter.

The story moves on.