the mud

The front porch, where 8 rockers are not enough to hold everyone, so people spill down the cascading front steps, leaning in to hear the conversation or to laugh even if they don't know what was said, is home. Cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and moms and dads and grandparents, ages ranging from 18 months to 85 years. Across the street is the beach, hidden more these days by piles of dunes and sand that have been dredged up for protection. But you can still see the blue and blue - the hazy line of ocean meeting sky and you can imagine the waves because you can hear them, and the gulls. You can smell the salt in the air and it settles in you like sugar in a glass of ice tea. You can feel the ocean drumming like a heartbeat against the beach. Here is my home.  I don't live here all year, except perhaps in my mind. It becomes my vision board whenever I try to "picture something happy." Instead, we have rented the same house for nearly 50 years. It pr

I need to be tucked in. I remember my mother tucking me into bed and I needed the sheets and blankets tucked in 'all the way around me.' It is funny now because my own kids didn't like to be tucked in that way. Annie would kick her way out of the tightest swaddle from the time she was four days old. I still like to feel tucked in. I wriggle my way into bed, with my side having perfect hospital corners, while his side is all a mess. I can turn just slightly so the blankets form an edge around me and I am tucked in. I even have an idea for a blanket edged in elastic so that when I'm on the couch I can have that feeling of being tucked in. Maybe that's already a thing. I wonder what makes me crave that Tucked In feeling now. Perhaps it is the craziness of the world that I want to cut myself off from, to create a barrier between me and the rest of the upheaval. I want to feel like I'm in a quiet oasis in the midst of the chaos. Months after 9/11, I remember hearing