Night Rain

I'm not a list person. I like to write them, but then I look up and watch the clouds pass overhead. No matter what direction I walk, I end up going in a circle. That’s how it’s always been. As you can imagine, all those years of schooling were unpleasant as ever – trying to walk a straight line, move from point A to B, map it all out ahead, tidy agenda. Even in moments when that begins to go well, I throw myself and my plans to the ground and let it all unravel. Like a seed spouting in slow motion, I love to watch how order undoes itself, agrees to chaotic movement until, suddenly, it catches the wave of nature and assumes a circle.

Water down a drain, layered spirals. My thought patterns, layered spirals. This lends to much angst when there is much to do – holidays and such. Much easier to follow lines on a list.

But now, joy. The sweetness of release – and I’ve only run five blocks away. To think that at 7:30pm I would be watching the rain punctuate slick asphalt – joyful release. I left them climbing the stairs, whimpering limbs echoing upward. It’s taken a long time to walk out, to leave, to forge new space, rather than nursing, tucking into the nest, weaving syllables to sleep.

At dinner, few words. Steve says, “I got you one of your presents today.” Glancing up for half a second, “Was that before or after I screamed at you on the street?” Slow rise of the head, hesitant smile in the eyes, “After.”

Looking past my reflection in the glass, cars pass, rain trickles, and I am still haunted by visions of a man negotiating his death in the Oregon back country. James Kim. Flashes of skin on snow, breath catching more each hour, light fading behind trees. Did he take off his clothes and walk into that creek? It plays in the background as I walk up the dairy aisle at the grocery store.

And today, my sister and I check in a few times by phone. “Have you heard from her today? Me either. Call if you find out anything.” “Ok,” she says. “Ok, I say.”

Like this, we navigate a sad territory. Like this for twenty years. Alcohol has ravaged more than one woman in my family, and many more down the line. In the background as I walk through frozen foods, she’s on the floor, her phone within reach but a million miles from her grasp. This is how it goes. I get a call for help one day. For two or three or four days following, I wait. Every time the phone rings, I prepare to hear the worst. And often I am the one she reaches moments before blackout.

The night of her fiftieth birthday, I found her hanging by fingertips from the edge of a cliff. For hours I said, “Are you still there?” She stammered, “Still, always.” Into that night, “Are you still with me?” She eeks, “Huh.” Deep around the darkest corner, “I can’t hear you breathing, show me a sign.” And then, just the sound of snot against the receiver.

Usually, with the hand that isn’t holding the phone, I race on-line for emergency phone numbers, nearby hospitals, mapquesting bits of information to find the location of her hotel. If I don’t do this, I page through People Magazine. I have to have a handhold, sturdy and trite.

Some people are born in monasteries, teachers and prayers in place. Some of us – most of us – are thrown to the dogs. Just past the first screen, we may have access to the same place behind closed eyes. And maybe the trees that hold us as children, the ones that protect us from the raging adults, are related by roots to the trees that shade the courtyard at the temple.

I can’t say where the best teachings reside. Except that this old homeless man who always says, “Thank you Ma’am, I keep you in my prayers, uh huh,” just walked by outside, his paper bags soaked in the rain. I want to run after him, but I don’t know if it’s to bring him home with me and give him a warm room, or to drop my umbrella and follow him down the street.