I have this persistent thing I do that gets in the way of my enjoying the here and now.  I count.  I count the days or weeks to figure out how much more time I have to enjoy whatever it is that I am doing in the moment.  Like being in the Unfrozen (for now) North Land for this summer.  I started counting before I even arrived at the gorgeous and outrageously over the budget local airport.  and the counting continues, every day, through out my day.  The counting includes getting out my calendar, flipping open my cell which has the calendar on its face ~ for now I am counting the weeks. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I am enjoying a lot of my time here in the Land of the Midnight Sun, even though we haven’t seen a lot of the big yellow ball in the sky so far.  But I can’t help but wonder how much more I might appreciate my days if I did not do this counting thing. 

And the counting thing morphs into a another mental occupation as well.  It goes like this.  When my beloved dog companion came into my life when she was 9 weeks old, I immediately set about worrying about the day she would die.  This worry wore all sorts of masks.  I would calculate the number of seasons she would be with me if she lived until X or Y date.  I would get all misty eyed watching her run and frolick and swim, her favorite, dreading the day when she might not be able to be so active.  This worrying and counting and dreading didn’t keep me from loving her but I think these intrusive thoughts and worry were pretty much worth-less.  When the day arrived that the world’s best dog companion died, my grief was not lessened one iota nor was I any more prepared to let her go than if I had simply expended all of the worry and dreading and counting energies on loving her even more while she was here on earth with me.  and since her death, I now do this counting dreading thing with my SO.

So today I am reflecting on what this counting thing began as ~ what purpose did it originally serve in my life.  Maybe it began as a means to keep me in the here-and-now by reminding me that I had more time left to do or be wherever or whatever I was doing or being.  But now I overuse the technique and it is actually backfiring and taking me out of the moment and adding a dose of anxiety to boot. 

Time to percolate on alternative means and methods.  Time to let go.  Time to be here.

My daughter has two black bears walking about and around in her subdivision here in Anchor Town (what we locals affectionately call our little city).  They appeared yesterday and a neighbor woke her this morning to let her know that the bear were still afoot and that my daughter’s SUV was broken into. 

Now I don’t know about you but I am far more afeared of the human wildlife than the 4-legged furry variety.  Really.  I think the two bears are simply doing bear behavior which consists of foraging for food and satisfying their curiousity (bears are very curious, I like that about them) about what we humans throw in our garbage cans.  They probably wonder why we run around naked sans fur, have we no modesty? 

Now I am not saying that bears in the wild, or in a city suburb, should be playmates for us.  No, they are wild and unpredictable and bigger than us.  But I would put money on them not going around and breaking into a person’s automobile to steal anything other than food.  I do not think they’re on the lookout for stuff to steal that has street retail value.  Now I could be wrong but remember I am still a Country Woman at heart…

Birthing a baby is hard work.  Birthing a baby is a miraculous event.  Birthing a baby is exactly what I did many years ago today ~ 32 years to be exact.  and daggummit if the attending nurse didn’t write down, supposedly verbatim with quotation marks and all, one of my last utterances spewed out at the top of my lungs “I don’t care if it’s a monkey, get it out of me!!”  Now why that freaking nurse wrote that down for all time memorial, who can fathom.  But before you judge me too harshly to be a heartless woman, please may I remind you that I was a 19 year-old young almost mother who was giving childbirth in the euphemistcally called “natural” method.  All that really means is a vaginal birth WITHOUT pain medications of any kind.  Before any of you start thinking that I was a highly responsible almost mother who chose this natural method, sans drugs, to preserve the integrity of the birthing experience and to not contanimate my offspring, I must sadly disabuse you of this generous assumption.  No, I chose this WITHOUT pain meds of any kind experience because I was young and dumb and without the financial means to BUY said drugs. 

Having whined all of that, I must add to the birthing myth that all of the horrible excruciating, mind numbing, torture of childbirth does indeed immediately take a backseat (but never, obviously, leaves the memories of the birther) the moment I laid eyes on the birthed one ~ my daughter.  She was, and remains, GORGEOUS  beautiful   lovely  simply extravagently and poetically stunning. 

And this baby  tiny infant of mine is now 32 years of age.  How can this be?  Where did the years go?  and how could they have passed so quickly?  so rapidly?  honestly.  It must be magic.  or a cosmic joke.  For it is true.  I can remember distinctly the moment, the second that my eyes lit upon her dark grey eyes (which eventually turned a rich dark brown) and her mass of black hair (which too eventually turned a rich dark brown) in her petite GORGEOUS face.  What I did next, I cannot explain, could not explain even then.  I counted, one at a time, each of this new being’s fingers and each of her tiny tiny little toes.  There were 2 thumbs and 8 fingers and 10 toes, making a grand total of 20 digits. 

I love this daughter of mine.  I did in that moment.  and I most certainly do in this exact moment on her special birth date.  and oh by the way, I am very very glad that I gave birth to a human Goddess and not a monkey.  I can guarantee you that I am grateful for this fact.  Nothing against monkeys.  But in my book and my life, my lovely baby girl teen young woman and now maturing Princess is price-less.

Still marinading on the longing in the heart for flavors topic.  As a Korean adoptee, I wonder what the word is that would adequately describe this deep seated beyond longing that is embedded in my soul for the flavors that I cannot remember or maybe never smelled or tasted.  and of those mysterious flavors, which would have been my favorite.  which ones, or even just one, would transport me back to my omma’s arms?

Barbara Kingsolver (one of my favorita authors) writes of longings in her Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - A Year of Food Life, in which she chronicles her family’s year long experience of eating only foods grown locally.  One passage caught my thoughts this morning ~ I don’t know what rituals my kids will carry into adulthood… I do know that flavors work their own ways under the skin, into the heart of longing.  Kingsolver writes of her childhood years of autumn apple harvesting and cidar making and how Autumn weather still brings that crisp greenish taste to the roof of my mouth.

As I said, these passages caught me up.  I am facsinated by longing.  memories woven full with smells, tastes, flashes of scenes from a time gone by.  What flavors have worked their way under my skin and into my heart of longing? 

sandalwood & patchouli ~ inedible but filled with strong longing;  Wonder Bread ~ driving by their ’second day’ location and swinging in with my little girl to buy their little pies, five for a buck, and smelling the yeastiness of the white bread rising and baking;   roasting garlic ~ ummmmmm, takes me back, present, and into the future.

What about you?  flavors ~ longings in your hearts ~

cake,

A

straw berry short

one.

sets my   heart on fire.

Southern short bread

will only do.

sugar

just enough to sweeten

red berries bite,

just enough   coaxing translucent

jeweled juices to

flow.

White crown.

only the best heaviest grade of cream.

Whipped.

Mounded.

Luscious.

edible

gift fit for a Queen.

@junemoon 2008

or real live kid.  I had a telephone psychic ask me What?  Were you found under a cabbage leaf or something?  after I responded to the requisite Birth Date Q & A with I don’t know my birth date.  That was many years ago but it took me a few more to make the connection with Cabbage Patch Dolls, which were a rage when my daughter was little.  I bought her one and helped her take the oath of motherhood, never once making the correlation between the idea of a cabbage patch where the dolls were grown to be picked and sold, to my own adopted status. 

Sang-Shil over at Land-of-the-Not-So Calm (I don’t know how to link yet), recently wrote about her personal quandry over not knowing her true birth date.  Since it turns out that our respective acknowledged birth dates fall within days of each other, reading her post was serendipitous.  I, too, have felt incomplete not knowing the date I was born.  Without that date, one cannot have an astrological reading prepared or a telephonic psychic reading.  Without that date, I have felt less legitimate as a child, an adolescent, a young woman, and now a woman stepping into her wisdom years. 

This weight that we non-knowers of birth dates give this not knowing may seem silly or foolish or too serious (my personal favorite) to those who know their dates of birth or to those who do not consider it a big deal.  and maybe in the big cosmic universe, these folks are right.  A million years from now, who will care that junemoon or Sang-Shil did not know their birth dates.  Will anyone know our death dates?  But for now in this year of my 51st year on Planet Earth, I care. 

Birth dates are a piece of an individual’s history that help anchor them in this life time.  I was not a cabbage patch doll.  I was not grown to be sold.  I am a human being.  I was born on a specific day in a specific year.

I imagine there are new folks living in our Berkeley Attic, having just moved there from somewhere else.  I awoke this morning with this firm announcement in my head ~ new folks.  For any of you who are familiar with the children’s book Rabbit Hill, you will remember the refrain of new folks that traveled lightening fast through the rabbit burrows and valley when the new owners of the farm arrived.  And just like the animals in that story, I too hope that the Attic’s new folks are good folk. 

If I sound a bit nostalgic for the Attic, I am.  That space holds a special rental place in my psyche.  Although the time was right to move on, the special-ness of the time and place remain. 

I now live at the Compound.  Jill’s (pseudonyms used to protect the guilty and innocent alike) Compound to be semi-exact.  The SO lives here when he is not living with me in what Alaskans fondly call the Lower 48 (neverminding that there are 49 states lower than us).  And I live here in the summers and winter holidays.  We moved to this space 3.5 years ago. 

The Compound consists of the main house that we share with Jill, a three bedroom rental downstairs, two cabins occupied by renters, and Jill’s work shop.  We have a private space within the main house consisting of a large room, a smaller room, a bathroom and a walk in closet and we are free to share the rest of the home with Jill and her dog.  Did I mention that there are 3-4 dogs on the property as well? 

The people who live here (ourselves included) all seem to share a common thread ~ we seem to be a little off the center.  What this means is that some of us fall within the a bit eccentric to more eccentric and others are just off the grid.  I will leave it to you to assign me to the proper category.  Yes, we are an interesting lot hunkered down in the Land of the Midnight Sun. 

Take for example our downstairs neighbors, a young man and his wife and their dog, who summer before last asked Jill’s permission to smoke salmon in one of their bedrooms.  Jill gave him the thumbs up and casually mentioned it to the SO and me as our large room is directly above the downstairs bedroom turned smokehouse.  She just as casually added that she didn’t think it would be a problem as who doesn’t love the yummy fragrance of fish being smoked.  The recipe that the dude used required 10 days of smoking.  Steady smoking.  as in do not, ever, let the smoking smells stop.  not once.  not ever in 10 days.  Okay, in that instance I don’t know who was weirder, urrrrr I mean more eccentric, the smoker dude for coming up with the bedroom smoking idea or Jill for giving permission.  So when last summer’s salmon smoking time came around, we put in our mild mannered request to the downstairs neighbor to please smoke his catch outside. 

Okay.  Okay.  It is afterall Alaska.  The place where people come to be Frontier Folk.  or to hide from the law.

for now.  I speak of the mother moose and her two baby calves who I spied from my study room window a little over a half hour ago.  I recognized her from seeing her on the side road several days ago.  She has a silvery sheen to her brown fur and a scar on her left side.  I questioned my recognition of her this evening as there were no babies to be seen as she munched down on tree leaves.  but then, lo and behold seemingly out of nowhere appeared the two calves, one noticeably larger than the other but both still small.  There the trio were, right outside my window. 

Right after this viewing I said to the SO, I don’t want to go back and he knew I meant back to California. 

and then.

reality socked me between the eyes.  I have committed to a 12 month postdoctoral fellowship.  The high temp here today barely made it to the low 50’s, the wind (cold) has picked up, and rain is slated for the coming next few days.  While in California it is warmer.  But there are wildfires breaking out everywhere.  These are components of the conundrum which stare me straight in the face. 

Where is home? 

For now, home is here.  Be safe mama moose and babies.  for another night, sleep well.  be warm.  be together. 

4-H, 1942, the number 3, and the month of March ~ none hold a special meaning to me.  However, my first mother and my adoptive mother do.  As does my Minnesotan partner and writing.  Heart pain I know a little something or two about.  and the oft included past royalty lineage, understandable standard fare. 

These words and subject topics were included in my 10 minute reading by a psychic medium at Saturday’s solstice fare.  I would say I received 20 dollars worth of Take Aways as I am still pondering and percolating on the information provided.  Some of the words and messages from beyond could eventually be Throw Aways but it is too soon to start tossing stuff into the psychic trash compactor. 

Grain of salt.  grains.  of love.  of death.  of passing over.  return me to the grain of salt.