Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Behind the Moon

Gone are the days, sixteen years ago, when I was with Jeb’s dad (no Jeb yet). I had a couple hundred dollars in the bank, living in a school bus up on blocks, wondering how far beyond 300,000 miles my Subaru would go.

Now I’m 42 in a Prius (color, “Pure White”). My husband (not Jeb’s dad) and I bought it used, but it looks brand new. It hovers low to the ground, a suburban vehicle, not built for off-road, barely skirting speed bumps.

In the back seat is a twelve-year-old and a Labrador. My pre-teen vies for use of ear buds with his smart phone, but I’ve established a no-headset rule in the car.

I am grateful for a reliable, gas-efficient automobile, a healthy, insightful son, and a sweet-natured, four-legged companion. Each of these is a wish, made realized. But maneuvering us all in the driver’s seat of this scene, I feel as though I’ve been cast in a movie. Given props and a costume for a role I’ve yet to fully embody. Who is this middle-aged lady in the station wagon, with a budding teen, and a dog?

What happened to Jeb’s booster seat, and me, passing back pieces of organic rice cakes, while we both sang, enthusiastically, to the music I loved, and he liked too? When Matt Costa’s “Behind the Moon,” was Jeb’s all-time favorite, and we could crank it over cruddy speakers on the short car ride to pre-school.

Now here I come
To dance around the sun
I’ve been oh so blue
Stuck behind the moon
Now let me in
Back where we begin
And let me hold you like the way
I used to do

Now it’s requests for bad pop music on the radio, or desired ear bud solitude, blocking the chance for conversation.

“Mom, I can still hear you with them in, I just like listening to my music.”

Now let me hold you like the way…

I used to do
I used to do

Unknown

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

The Thorn

2016-03-08_rose in jar

 

The Bohemian had already offered his rose cutting a greenhouse-like environment, by covering it with a Mason jar at the kitchen window. So when, on the same day, his tea bag proverb gave a respectful reminder, he took it as confirmation that he was on the right track. Ever-hopeful that this stem from my Valentine’s day rose may actually take root, the Bohemian was eyeing it, continually, for any millimeter of growth, constantly checking the dampness of the soil.

It seemed to me that he was respecting the thorn, and then some.

But then one day the stem darkened. He brought it to my attention, with concern, but I shrugged it off, suggesting that we still just wait and see. The Bohemian was skeptical.

Then one morning, while washing dishes, I glanced up to see an empty pot.

Later that afternoon, he asked “Did you see the pot?”

“Yes. Did you transplant the cutting?”

“No. I put it in the compost. It had that black stem. It just died.”

Our house sits on a steep hillside, shaded by a forest of trees. Anything that grows there survives purely on filtered sunlight and whatever rain falls. We have been surprised to discover young saplings of orange and lemon trees, and plenty of papaya starts, growing two and three feet tall amongst the undergrowth. The reason being, that past inhabitants of our home simply flung their fruit scraps, seeds and all, over the hillside. The young trees are merely volunteers, thriving survivors of a random scattering.

One can dote with full attention and still lose all. And all can arise from one carefree gesture.

Just because the Bohemian’s rose cutting didn’t make it, doesn’t mean he didn’t respect the thorn. It doesn’t signify that our true love won’t live on. In this case, I’d say it’s more about the practicals. Maybe next time he’ll use rooting powder, or try a higher quality cutting.

The poet in me does ponder the proverb and the thorn. That bitter that comes with the sweet. The full spectrum of life experience, which includes deterioration. Death.

We’ll take the thorn of defeat on this cutting. But I’m sure it’s not the last time I’ll see the Bohemian fiddling with plant life by the kitchen window, positioning glass jars, moving close to inspect, then standing back to admire, smiling all the while. Always trying to grow.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 5 Comments

Flying Cowboys

I’m having a moment.

Potatoes are steaming on the stove top, garlic cloves on the cutting board, and Rickie Lee Jones on the turntable. It’s 2016, and I haven’t heard “Flying Cowboys” in at least a decade.

In this moment, making dinner in the kitchen, the wind whips through the trees outside. A tropical mist drizzles our island in grays, sputtering in gusts of chilly downpours. This minor nip has me cranking the oven, baking, and feeling cozy.

Jeb is taking care of some laundry in his room. The Bohemian (rained in) is taking a rare pause, reading a travel magazine and sharing a glass of red wine with me.

I stand at the stove, a living snapshot of warm domesticity, when the familiar intro notes of “Flying Cowboys” needles out from the vinyl on the record player. Just as one whiff of tomato soup can transport you to your grandmother’s kitchen thirty years ago, this guitar riff instantly sends me to the year I turned 21.

Twenty years old in Pacific Beach, California, I was trying to find my place in a town where I didn’t know how to do the parties, and I was always getting sunburnt. Just when I felt completely lost, I met a man twice my age, his chest-length beard gleamed with almond oil in the La Jolla sun. Having recently left a Sikh ashram after 20 years of devotion, he’d moved to the beach, and unleashed his long locks from the confines of his turban. At a time when my Religious Studies classes weren’t reaching me, this man walked the sands by my side, talking about the Infinite.

That which there is no greater.

And that, I couldn’t really fathom. So I knew it was as close to God as I had ever come.

I’ll call my friend “the Guide”, as he came into my life-like a signpost, pointing to paths I hadn’t seen before. Figuratively, he led me to new terrain. Literally, we took a lot of walks together. Often, we meandered the coastline, sometimes spanning the length of several towns. We drank fresh-squeezed orange juice, ate mung beans and rice with garam masala, and listened to plenty of music. Our soundtrack was Van Morrison, Peter Gabriel, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Deep Forest. And driving in my Subaru, the constant in the tape deck was Rickie Lee Jones.

The Guide encouraged me to face my fears, and I took him seriously. I left Pacific Beach and set out on a summer-long, solo road trip, designed to put myself in all sorts of uncomfortable and daring situations (camping alone in the forest, hiking unknown trails, ‘going with the flow’) all the while trusting (and essentially, asking for living proof) that I was divinely protected. It was my mission to convince myself that I was wholly cared for in the world, that I could face a fear and overcome it, becoming all the stronger for it. RLJ’s “Flying Cowboys” cassette was with me all the way.

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Now, 42 years old in the kitchen, a 12-year old boy down the hall, and a husband in a nearby chair, the nearly 21-year old me, boulder hopping around Smith Rock, Oregon seems distant, until the music.

Standing on the cliffs today
I thought I saw you below
my shadow growing smaller…

Rickie’s words fall, full and sweet, over carefully plucked guitar strings.

Her longing melody brims, all tongue and teeth inside her mouth, swirling sound, then spilling:

Were you walking on the water?
Playing in the sun?
But the world is turning faster
Then it did when I was young
When I was young

At Smith Rock, I climbed to the top of rock peaks, as far as I could go without ropes. I dared to linger and dip in the river, even when I saw bobcat scat on the boulders. I reached a long arm to snap a photo of myself in the reeds, recording a solo moment long before ‘selfies’ had a name.

The irony of the song lyrics positions me on a timeline, simultaneously experiencing their truth in both past and present. The familiar notes of a song I haven’t heard in years, washes through me in my little Hawaii kitchen. I feel time and space viscerally. I am having a moment with steaming potatoes, my skin tingling, my heart open. I am happy and grateful in broadening perspective.

“Mom, it’s so unfair!”

Jeb has left his laundry, entering my musical moment, grumpy-faced.

Jolted from my reverie, my ears are now filled with the woeful tale of confusing directions on an English final, missed points, and a resulting lowered score. His grievance has drowned out “Flying Cowboys,” though Rickie is still scatting the refrain, “oh, when I was young…”

I’m far from the riverside grasses of Smith Rock now. There is a disappointed tween in my midst, and garlic cloves wait to be chopped.

Back in my cassette days with Rickie Lee Jones, this present kitchen scene was what my heart had truly wanted, though in my dreams it was only warm and fuzzy. I didn’t imagine all of the emotional intricacies that parenthood and house holding would entail.

Some days it’s only cutting vegetables and homework, and I don’t even see the shadow of transcendence. Other days, I can sense a sweetness beckoning to be fully felt, but am, somehow, afraid to let it in.

By grace (and oftentimes, a good song), there are, occasionally, the kitchen moments, reverberating like a well-struck chord. Granted from somewhere beyond time and space, they may only ring for an instant, but they hint at the depths I still cannot fathom.

That which there is no greater.

I still do not understand it.

But, sometimes, when the music plays, I feel it.