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We made our way to Mobile Bay and you could feel the surrounds getting more beachlike as we approached the ferry on Dauphin Island – pelicans, seagulls, and dolphins came out to welcome us to Ft. Morgan’s beach. There was an instant feeling of relief as the ferry reached the other side of the bay where the old fort controls the tip.

There is something so laid back and deserted about Ft. Morgan. Dogs run happily on the beach with the few owners that show up. This morning a man told me he had left his home in Colorado to spend Thanksgiving here – it was 15 degrees when he looked at the weather back home so he was in a cheerful mood with the sun twinkling off the water and the white sand sculpted dunes in the foreground.

Life is a beach.

The first adoption we tried didn’t go through and so we went to Portugal.

The second adoption appears to be headed in the same direction – nowhere – and so we’re headed to the beach.

I’m not even thinking of the third – I’m thinking we are going to start clearing space in our lives for tangible opportunities like Turkish lessons and nurturing our friendships that have been sorely neglected.

I went to the hospital with all of my mother’s living siblings and their spouses – it was a Thanksgiving gathering like in days of old. What was missing was the delicious desserts and coffee and my grandmother’s front porch swing. The young woman who had been praying for a miracle the day before entered the room and suddenly her countenance changed dramatically and she looked as if she had seen a ghost. She walked over to mom, held her hand, and looked at me so strange that I thought she had seen a ghost. She told us all that she was having an incredible deja vu moment. My mother at that moment was asking us all over to her apartment so that we could eat. The young woman asked me to come out in the hall for a moment and my aunts and uncles looked at me as if something was up. I went out and the woman put her hands of my shoulders and she said, “Does your mom know she is dying?”

And I said yes, I have told her.

“I have had it all wrong, I just had a vision that she is going to die, and I’m here to be with her to help her through this. And it’s you who I’m going to have a merlot with and I now realize I’m supposed to get back with my husband. That’s the miracle I’ve been feeling. It became clear to me just now.”

I started crying and hugged her. And I said, “I’m glad you are here with her because she likes you.”

This young woman has been cleaning my mother and taking care of her for months believing that she was going to see a miracle and my mother was going to get out of the hospital. She has been joking with her that they will sit on the porch and drink Merlot together and talk about this in the future. I was happy to hear that she realized what her role is – to support my mom’s passage.

A miracle indeed.

Over the past days, weeks, months, however long it has been my ability to navigate has been clouded by many factors outside of my control. The situation with my mother has been obfuscated by well meaning people who have not nearly had a handle on the situation that I understood intuitively from the get go. At the same time, there has been the adoption situation that I freely gave myself over to without skepticism once we started heading down a road and then was thrown for a loop when the cup that I was staring out turned out to be half empty not half full – but again I had this sudden awakening that the scales had been removed from my eyes not that things had changed.

Similarly, there have been events lately in my life that have pushed my back hairs up and when someone asked me what my reasons were for saying no, the only answer I could give is it doesn’t feel right. Something is wrong, I just don’t know exactly what.

November 25, 2009

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You need a respite from the break-neck pace of your life. Seek some downtime — you may even find yourself lost deep in thought. What you’re mulling over now may be puzzling, but the process is definitely productive. Take some free-form notes about what’s going through your head so you can refer to them later when you’re back in full operation.

I told E that I’m entering a zone where I feel like I’ve got nothing to lose and you know what, it feels pretty good.

Today as the assistant and I were washing mom, the girl told mom, “You know what I’m thinking while I wash your back? I’m thinking that I’d like to see a miracle in my day. I’d like to see you get up out of this bed. That’s the prayer I’m saying while I wash your back.”

I find this incomprehensible, this talk about miracles. And I’ve seen miracles.

I’ve seen my niece born one pound nine ounces live, thrive, grow to be a beautiful and talented creature. I’ve seen New Orleans come back after a deluge of biblical proportions. So yes, I’ve seen my share of miracles.

But I find it nonsense to talk like this to someone who has no chance of getting out of that bed. Utter nonsense.

On the way to the park this morning, someone left their roller suitcase bag by the curb and obviously had ducked back in their house to get something. Loca put the skids on and then got down on all fours and crawled in a wide arc around it.

I was walking to my truck from NOAC this evening after forcing myself to go to step class. Forcing, I might add again. I parked on Basin Street. I was thinking that people who live in the suburbs would never go to a gym like NOAC, which is on the edge of the French Quarter. They most certainly wouldn’t walk to their truck parked on Basin Street. Because they’d be afraid.

What they would miss is this – NOAC is housed in a beautiful old French Quarter building that was home to a men’s athletic club. I take step class in a ballroom with chandeliers and floor to ceiling French doors overlooking Rampart Street. When I was leaving the stars were bright and on the corner were three men sitting on milk crates with a boombox. Not begging like in San Francisco, they were just hanging out. One of them asked me why I was limping. I said I have a Charlie’s horse. He said, “Uh oh, know what time it is?” I said “What?” He said, “Time for you to see the masseuse.” The other man said, “Yeah, you’re right.” That’s what I’m going to do I told them.

I got in my truck and WWOZ was playing and I headed down Basin Street, passing places that I’m sure Louis Armstrong hung out in when he was alive. And I thought to myself, oh the places you will go and the people you will meet – life is but a dream.

I took the photograph of the family we met in South Carolina and set it on fire this morning. While I was watching it burn on the front brick path of the LaLa, a bird pooped on my shoulder.

Now here is a couple of things I know:

1) Burning photographs or even effigies of people who have maligned me makes me happy. Take my ex whatever he was who used his child to seduce me. Effigy material loud and clear. You can see me burning his likeness off the Magnolia Bridge in this photograph.

2) When a bird poops on you it is good luck. I was at the wailing wall in Israel and I was sticking a little prayer note in the wall when a bird pooped on the prayer book I was holding in my hand. It just so happened to be opened to the passage that reads, “Thank you God for not making me a woman…” After that I quit reading anything in that book.

There are a lot of scam artists in the world who will dangle children in front of you because they know you are vulnerable. There are also lots of birds who’d love nothing more than to poop on you. What you have to do in life is figure out how this can work for you. Burning photographs makes idiots disappear who have annoyed you. Accepting bird poop as a good omen is better than simply being shat on.

To thy own self be true, I was saying as one of the morning dog walkers called to me from the bayou. “What are you doing over there?” and then he walked over thinking that a bird had fallen off the wire and he saw my photograph all rolled up and burning. “Oh,” he said, unsure of what to say next. I said, I’m burning the photograph of the family who scammed us on an adoption.

He backed away slowly and said, “Well I hope you have better luck next time. You are going to try again right?”

I said, “Dunno. Right now, I’m done.” Then I went inside.