Headaches haunt me too often. I think sometimes my head hurts, because I have too many thoughts, ideas, feelings, memories inside me that need to be expressed, and I don’t give them the time of day. So they hurt me and demand my attention until I relent.
For instance, tonight. It’s 12:38 in the morning, and my body, my mind won’t allow me to sleep. I’ve tossed and turned. The left side of my head from the base of my neck upwards burns and is tight–an electrical surge trapped in some sort of capacitor. So I’ve decided to write.
Arizona is three years-old. Every night, at some hour after midnight she will leave her room and crawl into bed with me and my husband. Sometimes I will hear a cry and then the flap, flap, flap of her footsteps, the door to her room opening, then the busting into our room. Other times, I will hear her in a matter-of-fact way open the door to her room, shut it, open the door to our room, shut this door and then the shush shush of her feet on our bamboo floor as she walks to my side of the bed.
What I find fascinating is how she likes to sleep with her head up against our wooden headboard. How could this be comfortable? Throughout the night, I wake to the sound of her head hitting the wood, “klonk.” I wince out of my sleep and slide her body down away from the headboard. But inevitably, she slides back up in the course of her sleep and she and I are like a writer at an old type-writer, her body inching along like the typewriter’s carriage, I pulling her back so she can start all over again.
I hold her little hand, floppy from sleep, kiss the soft skin on the back of her hand, kiss her downy soft hair. Her hair smells of shampoo, sweat, candy. And this scent I breathe in until it fills my lungs. I imagine her scent swirling around my heart. With a “C” shaped body, I hold her close. Our breathing becomes synchronized. She seems a part of me again, back in my womb. Then it becomes clear–Arizona still remembers being in my womb, at least in her sleep. In my womb, her head rested against a hard place, my pelvic bone. In her sleep, she bumps her head against our head board. Good memories die hard. I hold her closer, honoring her trust, the safety and comfort she first came to know in my womb.
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Last Thursday, I took a walk with Arizona, something I rarely do, because “I am too busy.” How ridiculous is that? She wanted to take her scooter along, so I said, “Let’s go!” And then I remembered how beautiful life is when you slow it down. Arizona stopped to look at a dried up white rose on the sidewalk. She stopped to chat… “Remember when I fell down here and got a bloody lip?” ”What is this mama?” I was ten steps ahead of her. Oh, it’s just some dirty rain water on the sidewalk. “But where did these berries come from?” The “puddle” I only glanced at from afar was on close examination a mishmash of rainwater, white rose petals and some round, black berries.
Then she stopped at just about every flower. ”Do you think this flower smells like bubblegum?,” she asked of a purple iris. She was remembering what a docent had said during a local garden tour. Then she smelled the flower. She stopped to smell red roses, pink roses, white roses, blood orange geraniums, white geraniums. And I mean full on thrust the flowers onto her nose and bury her entire face in it. She reminded me of Flower the skunk in Bambi.
One time in one of the big pink roses with fluffy petals that she pulled towards her face, I thought I saw a brown beetle, perhaps it was even a dreaded ear-wig. But I didn’t have the heart to cry, “Wait! A bug.” A voice inside me told me to stop being the alarmist mom for once. And everything was okay.
We then found lamb’s ears. We compared the plants’ soft leaves to our dog’s ears. I allowed her to pick one leaf and she carried it around, kissing it once in awhile and rubbing it first on her cheek then on mine. I will take more walks with my Arizona.
