Mother Loves A Mariachi

This morning I was so tired that when Indy held up a pair of zip ties cut off a bike helmet and said, "Look mom," I said "Ohhh, so cute honey."

Like she had crafted those zip ties with love?

Indy watched me with a confused frown on her face as I proceeded to pour toothpaste into my coffee.

Mother's Day weekend was one of extremes. On Saturday I stayed up until midnight, which I haven't done since 2003, drinking Espolon Tequila in my quest to "know all about all the tequilas, and stuff," (education, people) and watching Supernatural after NieNie's memoir became too much for a Saturday night.

Sunday morning when my husband and daughters came with breakfast in bed, they woke me from a dream in which I was buying ALL THE BOOKS. I sat up confused, unsure if this line of people coming in to my dream state were part of a parade or a funeral procession and wherefore all the books? But they brought me Belgian Tripel Angelfood pancakes with strawberry confit. That's right. My mother's day pancakes had beer in them. Which was good, as I needed a bit hair 'o the dog, as people say and I didn't know what they meant until I looked it up.

Then Mr. V went to work and I spent the rest of the day: cleaning, plunging toilets, saying "what did you put down the toilet? Just tell me, I won't be mad, I just need to know. Is it marble sized? Baseball sized?Was it alive?", mixing Bloody Mariachis, securing Gotham, eating walnut shrimp, giving gifts, receiving Wellies and these beautiful huge orange tulips that I would like to call "Super Tulips", eating Panang curry, buying bike helmets, boldly going, rotating three loads of laundry, opening cards from my girls that made me cry, looking at bees, making Nutella silk dip, feeling guilty, packing lunches, telling my sister that I want to travel to "everywhere, except maybe Cincinnati. Maybe," and finally, eating Tahitian Vanilla Bean and Pistachio gelato before retiring to bed with a book.

And somewhere in there, my sister and I donned our Super Hero goggles, because, Moms: Finding Remedies for Onion Tears since 10,000 B.C.

Until next time, Avengers.

-V

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.

April

For Mary Kay

Yesterday in the morning I left the house

to go be with my grandmother

as she died.

I asked how I was to do this

--watch somebody die--

and the answer was to take the tenderest care of myself

and all living things.

Why is it that every night I

resolve to love more fiercely

and every morning I awake the same stunted, failing clay?

It had rained the night before and the earth

smelled wantonly ripe and wet like

making life.

The soil spongy like a woman's fertile womb.

The earth doesn't mourn the dying in spring.

The cherry blossoms and lilacs don't apologize

for their lurid and honey-fragrant vigor.

They told me

that the only answer to death

is to become more wildly and unabashedly

alive.

**At the time of this posting my grandmother is being made comfortable, and is cared for, and has not yet finished the journey from this world to the next**

Easter Happened

You know my brother-in-law, Justin? His parents live on a farmish. They invited us out for Easter. Now wasn't that nice?

Indy at the start of the Easter egg hunt. A very civilized hunt. Nobody threw down or cried.

My niece Eisley holds this chicken which had a name and scared me a little.

Me and the husband all celebrating Easter before it was cool.

Ayla. Snake-charmer.

"These things can't flip over, right?" My sister says unto me before gunning it over a hill. "I don't know, Heather," I answered QUITE CALMLY. "I bet they could."

Here I'm all like, glamour pose! And my dad is all like, I'm too young to die.

Cousin (second cousin? first removed?) Moriah feeds this beast with horns which is very friendly, I am sure.

Noah and Ayla, in repast. There was also a two-year-old Noah there, which got really awkward anytime someone said "Hey, Noah, want a beer?" (Or, "Noah is embarrassingly drunk".)

Indy had the time of her life on Pepper Ann.

The responsible adults ribbed every child to go "no hands". Ayla, snake-charmer, obliges.

The city slicker in red boots accidentally double-clicked her tongue at the horse and the horse galloped. It was awesome. (Really).

By the end, Indy was in Peeps-and-pleasure induced tears. No pictures for her. "I hope Indy doesn't turn around for the picture," said my mom, trying to reverse-psych her. "Mom," I said. "You can't out-Indy Indy."

I guess this is the part where I say, Happy Easter?

I'm not really a photo-blog type person. You may have noticed.

Spiritual D.N.A.

Exhibit A (1)

I was baptized on All Saint's Day or Reformation Sunday (depending who you ask) as an infant, in an Episcopalian church. My parents were not regular church-goers at the time.

Reformation day celebrates the day Luther challenged the Catholic church. The origins of All Saint's Day skew more Catholic than Protestant. It celebrates those who have attained a beatific vision of heaven--which isn't, really, very Lutheran--and originally was meant to celebrate the prayerful bond between those in heaven, those in purgatory, and those on earth. Decidedly un-Lutheran.

The Episcopalian church ordains women. I happen to believe that women should be ordained. My mother, last time I checked, does not.

Exhibit B (1)

When my mother was young, her own mother dropped her off in front of a church on Sundays, offering money in her hand. My mother would wait until my grandmother drove away, then walk in her church shoes to the drug store and spend the offering money on candy or at the soda fountain.

I like this story about my mother.

Exhibit C (1)

When I was a baby, my mother was approached by Jehovah's Witnesses. She was young and, I imagine, hungry for a spiritual tradition. My father, who had been raised Lutheran, called bullshit and they began attending a Lutheran church. I'm grateful for this, as I would have made a terrible Jehovah's Witness. It is far more difficult to be a bad Lutheran; I still don't know if I've accomplished it.

My father's people were Swedish and German and Lutheran by tradition.

Exhibit D (1)

Three years after me, my infant sister would be baptized in a Lutheran church. She identifies as Lutheran to this day.

Exhibit A (2)

By the time Ayla was born, I had left the Lutheran church and was dabbling briefly in non-denominational Protestantism at a very large church. Around the time Ayla was one, I stopped going to church altogether. To this day, I very much enjoy not going to church. My free Sunday mornings still feel like a gift. Like hitching up my petticoats to wade in a cool river.

I have developed other ways of nurturing my spirituality. Ways that fit my frequency. They are gentle and grateful. They scorn guilt. They focus on love.

Exhibit B (2)

Neither of my daughters have been baptized.

This was difficult for my mother.

Exhibit C (2)

"If you think God is a boy, he's a boy," says Indy. "If you think God is a girl, he's a girl. That's it." She shrugs. What's the big deal? "I think God wears lipstick," she adds. She tells me the most fantastic things. She wants to be Catholic but "daddy never lets her". (Not true). God lives in the stars but also in the flowers. God has a face like a tree but does not have blonde hair, just the picture has blonde hair.

"I think God is a boy," says Ayla.

Her world view has always skewed patriarchal.

It is possible I've given birth to a conservative.

Exhbit D (2)

Indy seems particularly spiritually inclined. She has a lot of questions and talks about her dual-gendered version of God often.

But both girls agree that church (their grandmother takes them on occasion) is boring.

Exhibit A (3)

I spend a lot of time wondering what things are passed to us through blood. Some things are easy: from my ancestors I've inherited fair skin, small eyes, a creative drive, a dramatic flair. But what about other things? What about the way I view the world, my ease in it, in my own skin, with others? My parents raised two daughters in one spiritual tradition. One left, the other stayed. It was painful for some members of my family. I know this.

Studies on identical twins suggest that our propensity to believe in a higher power has a genetic component. So do our political leanings.

Exhibit B (3)

I didn't leave the Lutheran church because it was a bad church. I left it because it wasn't right for me. My spirit craved a different tradition. It asked to be separated from the routine, the creeds and recitations and lessons I'd learned by rote, that I practiced without meaning or celebration or any earnest yearning for the Divine.

I think these very things that left me feeling dry and alienated from my spirit are the same things that bring others comfort and peace.

I believe there are an infinite number of ways to celebrate the infinite Divine and I believe in a Divine that smiles on all of them.

So then: which was in my blood--the Lutheran, or the leaving?

I believe it's both.

We Are The Weirdos

As a teenager, I spent most of my time driving all over Denver with my three best friends, in one old Honda or another, seeing movies and eating Italian food and daring each other to do things like go through the drive-thru backwards or take the forbidden bus exit off the highway, the one that goes underground and says BUSES ONLY(scandalous, I know). We called ourselves The Blood Sisters, and liked to pretend we were the girls from that 90's girl power gem, The Craft. We each had a direction. I was West (I lobbied hard for West) and when we needed a little magic, to make doors swing open at school or to become impervious to unrequited love and popular-girl disdain, we would chant "North, South, East, West, Craft, Craft, Craft!!"

So as you can see, we weren't going on a lot of dates. My friends did occasionally, but never me. I can say this now because of years of therapy high self-confidence. When we weren't out, awkwardly trying to make some coffee shop "our" place (like on 'Friends')by over-staying our welcome and over-tipping, or "crusing", in the technically illegal sense, around the Arvada mall or sitting in King Soopers eating Ben & Jerry's and browsing Teen Beat for pictures of boy bands, I was content to be at home with my family.

My family isn't exactly normal either. We sing in restaurants and talk to each other in accents and the first time I brought my now-husband home to meet them, we all thought it would be funny to pretend my parents were alcoholics and scare him. It made more sense at the time. But before that, back in high school, if I wasn't out dabbling in witch craft I was at home, where every Saturday smelled of barbecue and the soundtrack to every evening was Garrison Keillor. I was content at home, penning damply emotional poetry, or gleaning a rich sexual education from novels, or spending my requisite hours on the phone. My sister's room was right next to mine. "I can hear everything you're saying," she would taunt me. We got along, mostly, in high school, and if we weren't driving around together listening to Save Ferris and Aqua, my sister would sit in her room and make things. The first thing she made me was an Altoids tin covered in pictures of moons and stars that she'd gleaned mainly from the Delia's catalog. She didn't have modge-podge then, so she'd stuck the pictures to the tin with clear glittery nail polish and presented it to me. It was lovely. It was so me, back then. I still have it.

Now my sister has refined her artistic talent and uses it to run a small business and throw incredible parties. On Sunday she threw a Red Riding Hood themed party for her daughter Violet's very first birthday. Violet has red hair, and I am sick with envy. I wanted a little ginger kid, someone to smell like sunscreen and stay inside with me year 'round, in the dark, where it's safe. There, there now. Safe little ginger. Mommy's got you.

Anyway, my blonde sister got the red-headed child who earned the nickname (what else?) Little Red. And the red-headed child turned one. Below are the results.




Ayla, Cousin Eisley, and Owl Indy


Who doesn't love a craft? (Besides me.)



I make funny expressions when I talk to people:




Me with my lovely sis and the birthday girl, Viv. (Short for Violet).


(My style secrets, you ask? I have two hippie tunics and one hip-modest cardigan and I wear them to every single holiday, party, and wedding. Done.)


My mom, my grandma, my daughter


My mom and dad



Red Scares The Wolf



Look, I might spread Nutella on a Wal-Mart croissant and call it a work of art, but my sister is the real deal. You can visit her blog here, where I'm sure she'll have a party post up soon, with lovelier pictures. (Vintage photos are probably out now. I'll be the last to know it). Or you can visit her craft blog, Lark & Lola, where she does amazing things like turn tea towels into pillows I covet, and is kind enough to tell you how.

Now hipsters, please excuse me. I have to go pen some damp emotional poetry and steer backwards through the Wendy's drive-thru window.

XOXO
-V

Day After

Thanksgiving was almost ruined by:
-Everyone called my side dish "a dessert" and I pouted
-the talent. The talent was being difficult for a moment there (but who can blame her little turkey-stuffed heart?)

Thanksgiving was saved by:
-my sister's homemade pecan pie (Who knew I liked pecan pie?)
-my brother-in-law's prime rib or whatever. (He kept calling it that)
-my mom's corn casserole (Please don't tell anyone I enjoyed a casserole)
-my dad's Ikea song
-my husband's delicious roasty pumpkin beer
-everyone loving my side dish too much to care if it was a dessert (IT WASN'T)
-my daughters and my niece Eisley running a wild rumpus through. . .
-my sister's gorgeous and catalog-ready home (thrift stores and Ikea are her secrets)
-A Very Gaga Thanksgiving tv special

Happy Day after Thanksgiving. I'm not out shopping, but I kind of wish I was.

xoxo
-V

Four Breweries and a Wedding

So, we partied down.

There were three visits to breweries, three visits to brew pubs, don't get me wrong I'm not complaining but I'm starting to think my digestive system is not the biggest fan of beer.


O'Dells is a lovely place to start your brew tour. If you're into that kind of thing. Then head to FunkWerks and try the Maori King. All their beers are delicious but I love the tropical fruit hints in the Maori. If I had to reccommend just one O'Dells, I'd go with the Glider Cider. Brewed with champagne yeast, this baby is light on your tongue, just the right mix of sweet and tart, and goes down way too easy.

Then, stop drinking. Just stop. Your stomach will thank you.

If you can't stop, you're not an alcoholic you're just German and Czech. Make your ancestors proud and continue on to Coop's for the Sigda's Chili beer. Never had a chili beer like it. If, by this point, you find your drinking spirit is willing but your flesh is weak and bloated, ask them to mix you up the Bloody Mary with a touch of stout. You won't regret that either. Look, I swear we do things other than eat and drink when we see our family. We also talk about eating and drinking.

Order the garden salad with smoked salmon if you want to give your body any fighting chance of maintaining it's normal functions. If not, or if this is your first day of revelry and you're still feeling strong, go with the Ring of Fire burger (jalapeno, blue cheese, Frank's, oh my) or the fish n' chips, which Coop's does just right.


I swear my six-year-old is not drinking a beer.

Swing down to Oskar Blues in Longmont. Hit up the Tasty Weasel and order whatever's on tap. There's a good chance it was brewed by Mr. V. There's a better chance it's delicious. What am I saying?? This is why I don't write food/beer/travel blogs.


Next, round the corner to Oskar Blues Homemade Liquids and Solids. These guys have tons of delicious microbrews on tap and do not disappoint. My favorite's were the Widmer Pitch Black IPA, which was caramely and roasty, and OB's Workingman's Stout. Order the fried pickles, which are spicy with a light batter, and the Silo Burger, which is sooo delicious you won't care that you just consumed three kinds of meat. Then be smart like me and let your brother-in-law buy you a cocktail. Get the one with cinnamon and star anise floating on top. Easy as pie. Tastes like it, too.

After we spent two and a half days tasting every fermented beverage northern Colorado has to offer, there was a wedding. Indy and Ayla were tapped to play flower girls. It was touch and go for awhile there, with Miss Indiana Sophie crossing her arms and tucking in her chin and refusing to move. In the end she made it down the aisle just fine. She opted out of the flowers and bore the rings instead. Look, somebody had to. I'm not going to make a Frodo joke. That's because I lost my moxie sometime after switching from beer to cheap, sweet champagne.

I can't say much more about the weekend because I am a dry tap, here. My sweet libations hath all been spilt, my pleasing personality ran for the hills, and I've entered my week of cranky during which I hope to see no one and have sworn to ingest nothing but coffee with soy milk, salmon, and kale. At some point a bird pooped on my head and at another, a group of amazing women danced around me while I shimmied with a bottle of champagne.

Yep. That happened.

The last thing I would like to say is that I loves all five of my sisters and these chicks are welcome to my house any time.

Let's just do wine from now on.

There's going to be a lot of pictures now.


Noah, his Dede, and Ayla at the rehearsal dinner and let me just say, the lesson I learned this weekend is that if you're not at a restaurant that has specialty cocktails, ones they've developed and mix special, just stick with the red wine.


Susie, Sophie, Mercy. Hotness.


Flora, Fauna, Merriwether, flower chicks.







Kojo, Nyenna, Lady Ci, Ayla, Brother Trey in suspenders, and Titus, the only man who asked me to slow dance








The gorgeousness of Lucy and Nyenna.


The gorgeousness of my sisters Mercy and Lucy.


Susie almost drops the wine.


My sister Lucy and her sister Kiah. We're the new nuclear, baby.


My dad, my amazing niece La Violetta, and my mama.


Don't you guys think I am fascinating???


Moi with moi belle whatever is french for sister, Heather.








PS: Next time you're in Ft. Collins, get yourself to the Little Bird Bakeshop in Old Town Square. A latte so delicious it's ruined Starbucks for me, and the best croissant I've had since I departed Paris one sad day, ten years past. I went twice. It was grand.