Your Bells

Every year since we lost you, since your birthday, since this day, December 18th, we have picked out a bell to give to you as your gift.  You will have a little tree full of them someday.  Today there are 3.  I needed something that first year to give to you.  So close to Christmas there were so many ornaments everywhere, among these were bells.  I knew they would be perfect for you.  A silver bell with your name engraved on it, that was your first bell Frost.  Last year, a thin clear glass bell with delicately glittered stripes and a velvet ribbon to hang it by.  Today, a handblown thick glass bell of greens and blues from a far away country.  They are all for you, they will all be different and special.  But I think that the true gift of your bells is the sound.  Your bells help all the angels that fly with you to get their wings.  I know that this is an idea from a movie, but I would like to believe it.  I would like to believe that a tiny sound from Earth could travel as far as it needed in order to be heard, in order to create divine beauty. 
This year, on a very sad day, 26 people were sent to heaven.  20 of them children.  Your sister and I decided that tonight we would ring your bells 26 times so that they could fly with you on your birthday, Frost.  Please show them the peace that surrounds them now.  Show them the windows in the sky, so that they can look down on their families and send the same comfort and hope that you have always sent to us. 
I love you so much, my three year old boy, my perfect angel.  Happy Birthday to you Frost.

Night, night Frost
mama loves you

Two Trees

I remember the two trees in the front yard of the house we lived in when I was smallest.  I remember circling around them like the squirrels, only I never went as high as they and their singing tails did.  I remember that the trees were some kind of oak, pin oak I think.  They were tall and strong and their acorns made a crunchy mosaic of our grass in the autumn.  I remember looking out through the front windows at them when the weather was too cold or too rainy, my eyes were always drawn to them.  They were mostly the same, they were twins, and to me they seemed to be brothers.  I know that they grew differently, but in my memories one will never be without the other.  The roots of the two trees were as sure to mingle beneath the ground as the branches of the two trees connected in the sky.  They stand in my mind as a symbol of where I come from, my home.  They stand as a symbol of life shared through two seeds dropped and allowed to grow from one Mother tree.  The same bond that I feel will always be there between you, Frost, and your little brother growing in my belly.  From the Earth to the sky.

There are two trees in the front yard of the house we live in now.  I watch them through the front windows.  I see a mother squirrel rest under one, stretching for hours in the shade.  I wonder at what she must dream.  I walk under the trees and look through their canopies, to glimpse a mosaic of blue sky.  They are sugar maples.  Right now they are a beautiful crimson and rust, their leaves pirouette as they drop.  I listen to the sound they give in the wind.  It is something more than a rustle, something more than a crinkle.  It is me, listening to your breath.  It is me, feeling your brother change inside.  It is peace, knowing that we are together in quiet times.  It is happiness, knowing that he met you before he came to us.  It is love, knowing that you chose him for our family.   It is knowing that your roots are the same and that your branches will always reach each other.  It is home and heaven, and one will never be without the other.

Night, night Frost,
Mama loves you

Wanda's gone

Frost, you've been guiding me lately.  I go to you nightly for help, for a way.  You help me find that way through the heartache of carrying another child.  I like to think that you bring me back to the joy of it.  I get lost a bit and wrapped up in the hardships of everyday life.  But then I talk to you and I am reminded that I should be happy.  Only you and Hadley know what this little boy is learning now.  Only you have grown within me.  Please show him how to be strong and live. 
I miss what my family was before everyone started dying.  It began with my dad, everyone changed then.  It feels smaller and farther away than when I was a child.  I'm loosing more and more every year.  It's getting so scant that tiny arguments devastate me because I feel like these will make my family slip away to nothing.  I need this baby to help our family grow again, to help your sister feel a connection that I feel that I haven't been able to give her the way that I should have.  It's not the same, it's not the same.  I hope that loosing my family here means that your family is growing.  Sometimes I feel like people left to be with you.  Are they with you Frost?  Did you meet your Great-grandma Wanda not too long ago?  I loved her so.  I loved her hands, I have pictures of them.  I was there when she died, in the room with her and her family.  I kept thinking of her with you for the first time.  I kept thinking of her with your Great-grandpa Milton for the first time in 30 years.  I kept thinking of her with her mind and her strength back.  And as her breath and heart failed her I whispered into her ear "You hold my baby, Grandma, you can hold my baby for me now."  After, I felt calm, so I know that she did just that. 
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Sky Debts

I've been feeling really happy and good about myself lately. But I'm afraid tonight I am paying the price for this. I feel so alone. I cried to you, did you know? I saw the crescent moon at the bottom of the sky under two bright stars in a line. Like a pendulum striking the horizon. Trees and clouds muddled my sight, but I knew it was swinging. It was never out of my mind. Out of site, out of mind has never been true to me. Since I was a child I have held tight to the things that I have lost. Squeezing out every slip of breath, every burn of touch, until it embeds itself into my very flesh. I've made a uniform for myself out of my memories. I've been talking about them too much with others, trying to shape the way they think of me. Trying to make myself more mysterious by giving away too many of my secrets. It's not mysterious, it's ugly. My happy is ugly. I try to cover. You know me, Frost. Why won't things work? Is it because of me? My heart is aching, but I take time to pet the cat. I take time to try and sooth myself through the comfort of another. Lonely doesn't help this.

A row of caning in the basket was missing. It was old and it should have been missing parts. Or it should have been restored. I don't know where the caning went to. I don't know if it was damaged all at once or if little bits came out over the years. Everything ages in its own style. How much does it take to break down? To collapse? To change? The basket still holds everything it did before. The missing part did not eliminate function. I wonder if the basket remembers the tree it came from.

Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

What a film can make us long for

I'm looking for something today. I can't seem to find that feeling. That feeling that fills me up and keeps me. I tried to make myself dream that feeling earlier. If I did, I forgot it again. I tried to find it in music and driving all around. But all I found was an empty bigness in far off houses with lights that tell me someone lives there for a time. I saw it in a movie once and afterwards took a shower with which to wash away my tears at its absence. A movie where a lover ran after a lover. Over centuries and lives. Through flesh and wood. It didn't matter, the feeling lasted. I'm looking for a something to last for me. For once and all, why does everything go away? When will it come back? Everyone comes back, I just don't know when. I wonder why we meet the people we meet. That's all.

Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.