When they fall is it because they have seen too much?

Close your eyes, then lift your head to the night sky

and open them.

At first there is just darkness, then the longer you stare,

A star

comes forth and it looks at you.

and at that moment

you both are known.

The stars were down low this morning, wrapping around my path, with their wishy promises.  I envy them.  Every one of them, even though I could never see every one of them.  People either seek out their dreams through them or don't see them at all and the stars are fine with that.  When they are down low in the mornings, I feel as though I should take my shoes off and dance upon their burning points until I wind myself up to where it doesn't matter.  If I could watch from up there I could see everyone I love at once.  I could know what people think when their hearts are not hidden.  People don't hide from the stars.  Frost, is that where you are?
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Hollow Days

I've been walking to the end of my road every evening to watch the sunset.  My road is perpendicular to a bigger road.  A road with many cars.  I watch the cars as I wait for the colors to come.  I watch them and I wonder at the people driving them.  I wonder if they are happy as they pass by me.  I wonder if they notice me standing there.  I wonder at my own happiness as the sky deepens.  I try to remember what made me happy before you died.  I know that the moon and stars amazed me when I was young.  Is amazement the same as happiness?  Sometimes I think it could be. 
A couple of weeks ago I had a hollow day.  The hollow when you know that things aren't the way they need to be for you to breath correctly.  Things that should be automatic don't happen when the hollow days come.  The hollow when the empty places in you grow and open up and scream their own names so fiercely that others feel it just by looking into your face.  The hollow that is loneliness.  The hollow that takes over when you realize what you are missing.  Before I knew to miss you, I didn't know that I wasn't breathing fully.  I didn't know that there was something to gasp for.  I can't have you, I'm not allowed to see you.  I have these places in me that couldn't survive your loss.  Places in me that died off when you left.  These are the places that take over on hollow days.  The hollow days pass by now, but they do come back from time to time.  In the beginning they were my constant.  Sometimes I take your brother or sister with me to the end of the road to watch the sunset.  When they are with me I am reminded of the places that were born in me when they came to be my children, the places that warm and comfort me.  The places that fill me up.  I know that you share these places with them.  I know that you helped me to grow.  You brought me your own kind of light, one different from theirs.  I know all this to be true, but on the hollow days knowing how much more I could have felt through you had you stayed, that is what torments me so.  I would cherish a visit from you.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Rains

Yesterday the rain came and spent the day with me.  It was a day for memories, and they sogged in like the mud around my feet as I clambered around the garden.  I tried to make the day for sleeping the way the rain usually prefers me to.  It didn't work that way yesterday.  I was called outside by the leaden sky and by your brother's curiosity.  The gentle showers were new to him, so out we went.  At first I held him in an attempt to keep him somewhat clean and dry.  I tried to show him what happened when the fat drops hit the large leaves of the hostas.  I tried to show him where the birds took shelter in the bushes and under the heavy canopy of the trees.  He wanted to make his own discoveries.  His struggles always overpower me so I let him down to explore and create.  I kept an eye on him, and then I let myself begin to feel.  The memories that came to me at first were those I had had of times before when the weather was similar.  As a child looking East, from a house which is no longer there, toward a storm that long ago ended.  As a teen, digging holes in the earth in which to plant herbs of ancient use and mystery.  As a young woman remembering a place in which she should never have been, yet she cherished so much.  These were things of my life now.  Things which I possess deep inside and bring up every so often.  The longer I stayed out in the rain the further I felt from these things.  I went deeper inside and pulled up a past I didn't recognize but still felt deeply connected to.  I became everywhere.  The longer I spent time with things that have always been here the farther back I went.  The rain was here when I was not.  The plants I tended have always been here, touched by ghostly fingers long ago.  The stones your brother brought to me, so old, so old that their secrets do not matter anymore.  The clouds forever changing, have they ever once repeated a shape?  I knew these things from before, I know I did.  And so I began to cry because I missed them even though they were right there with me.  I cried for not remembering the moments gone by.  I cried because I could feel it and yet I couldn't remember why I felt it I just knew that there was something there yesterday.  Something there that I was supposed to have but no longer did.  A connection that people bring with them from life to life.  I had found it in different places and people throughout my time here.  Yesterday I wanted to feel it more than anything.  Yesterday I missed having that bond that doesn't need words.  I missed not knowing if the ties of my histories were strong enough to carry themselves here.  I missed knowing for sure that I hadn't missed something. Or lost something.   Yesterday carried me back.  Tonight the moon brought me back to knowing.  Knowing that recognition of yourself is a gift, and if you can share your true self with another it is a treasure.  I hope that my soul is remembered.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

The Windshield

The other day I let my mind wander in a different direction.  I was riding in the backseat of the car next to your brother.  The trees moving to the left of me set the scene and my thoughts followed.  They weren't what was expected even though they are there every time I drive myself home from work.  I thought about what was behind them and who had been in them and how I would never know.  I thought about how many things I would never know and how many people I would never know.  I thought about the people that I do know and how out of those people there are only a very few that I want to know everything about, and some of those I will never know enough about.  I wondered at how many people want to know everything about me.  I felt sad then because I don't feel that it is very many.  It used to be more I think.  But that number changed I think.  I wondered at why some people have to leave our lives when they are the very people we want to be with us the most.  And how others are there all the time and we feel nothing.  I wished that people would let the others in their lives know the truth sooner before time takes away their chances.  It makes me sad when chances are missed.  It makes me even sadder when people don't even realize that great friendships are missed out on because the timing is off.  I think we love because we have to.
The longer I watched the trees the farther my thoughts ventured out.  I let them search for things that weren't really there.  A sound came to me then.  A humming, a buzzing, a sound of the Earth.  It was not the car moving on the road.  It was just for me.  No one else in the car heard it or would understand that it was there.  I think it may have been a memory surfacing.  My Grandmother used to hum all the time when she was alive.  I feel like I drew that up from deep within.  I feel like she and I knew that I was in urgent need of comforting at that moment.  I was on the verge of tears and as I wondered at the line of trees and let the sounds of my childhood in, I let just one tear fall.  Just one, so that no one else knew.  Just one, to let myself know that I could feel that day.  That I was alive because something so everyday could touch my soul in such a way.  Looking out the car window as things move quickly by has always been something that I draw upon in times of reflection, in times of solitude.  I feel like the most personal truths can be found as the rain drops seek out their wind-blasted paths across the edge of the windshield when driving through a thunderstorm.  I've watched those drops a thousand times and they never end up going in the direction I think they will.  They come together, they dance, they move apart, they fall off the glass, they stop and dry up.  They are pushed by their circumstance, they are left with their will.  They do what is needed for the universe to be complete no matter who notices, no matter who is touched by their existence.  I try to notice the little things, so that the little things might know that they have a purpose.  As we drove on, I noticed your brother looking out his window.  He saw an airplane and made his little hand sign for it.  I am happy that he watches for things too.  I am happy that I hear him and your sister hum to themselves from time to time.  I am happy that sometimes the little things are the most important things we are left with.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

Four Years

Happy Birthday sweet Frost.  Our lives have changed so much in the last year.  Your little brother has brought to our lives what I know you would have.  Every hug he gives and receives is a little tighter, every song is a little more dear, every kiss a little sweeter, all because he shares these with you.
Early this morning I went outside for a walk,  a walk with you.  The day was young and the moon was still bright as it set in the West.  The sun was rising and they shared the sky.  Each with its own space, each so important.  Each so beautiful and equal.  I have you here Frost everyday, every night.  You share my heart with your brother and sister equally.  Today for you I give my heart, the only gift I can send.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you

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