Anam Cara

*note to reader: Due the limitations of language, please excuse the abrupt changes in space/time context. Loosen the lens and travel with me, several places at once. Past, present, future, and other dimensional visits, through the small box of English syntax.

Who drives twelve miles in the rain, bumper to bumper, with scarce time between drop off and pick up, for the new brew of choice: roasted coconut mate’?

You know who.

(“I don’t want to go to cool, mama, (I) want my (s)nack with you, want mama.”)

For this morning, to get me there, a yoga trance dance track. A melodic spirograph unfurls, the rabbit hole in sound, in vibration, in beat, and I slide down, happy. Happy to travel, better than sex, because the desire is so great and so satisfied.

(Every twenty minutes she screams in pain. I run from the kitchen and hit the floor, eye to eye, “I’m so sorry, baby, mama’s here.”)

I whisper through my headset, which, I suspect, is not so soft, “Let your shoulders down…” and she does. Holly's mouth moves, something about the times that Josie and Amelia awakened, to tell me that, really, she didn’t sleep. Bongos and keyboard strokes around my cochlea, I smile, “I got eight hours,” as if it’s a drug.

(Finally, four agonizing days later, she poops. Digging nails in my arm, bird tracks, “Push gently, River, breathe with mama,” but she just drops her brow to my bicep and cries. The cry behind all the other ones, and I hear something deeper and older. She's discovering more about human pain than she should, but I'm right there because that was my path, too, and I trust that the threshold for joy is widening simultaneously.)

Sleep is a drug, a seldom visit, and I’m strangely giddy.

Close my eyes, still with the conversation yesterday morning with Carrie. On the river together, side by side for moments here and there, and I’m grateful for that. Love the women in my life. Love to see them stand in the center of their lives and own it. Take it back. Decorate it. Flaunt it. Work it. Deliver it. Share it.

Sisterhood.

Piano sequence sounds just like rain. Follow me.

(I hand the phone to River to talk to my sister. Instantly she eeks out, “My mama mad at me, I cry….” I scan and search the past hours, days. Yesterday. Nap time. I look all over for her required sleep toy. Can’t find it. Can’t find it. Up the stairs, all around, can’t find it. “I’m sorry, I can’t find it! And I can’t take it, River, just go to bed, please, go to bed!” She cries.)

Releasing in the sound of music and rain and a women singing, like waves to the shore, part of the ocean, the stars up above, part of the sky, when I drift to you I dream of the river, of water so blue, wish I could live there….

I remove my headset and say to Holly: You heard it here. I’m finishing the book, opening my practice, and finding a house to rent so that we can all meet and do our work, see clients, teach, rent the space out for classes, workshops, and meetings. Central southeast.

I ask: what would you be willing to do to have the time to write in a space like that? I say: in 24hrs you could have a business card to coach in media relations, public relations, writing. Done.

Anam Cara, the name just comes a moment later. It was brought to my attention by another friend a few days ago, just a phrase glanced at in email. I know it’s right but I don’t know what it means yet.

Yes, the intention will named Anam Cara, or soul friend. Here’s a lovely explanation: Anam Cara.

Pick up time, gotta run and roll and reel and swim through the clouds, south to my river.