at 7 this morning i call my mom, i hope she’s on her way to work 

but she’s already there, she says she can talk though 

and in the morning her voice is soft and new sounding

ready to start the day, she asks me how i am 

i can barely choke out the words, my tears strangling my throat

i’m feeling that same way again — 

waking up in the middle of the night scared; can’t go back to sleep, diarrhea and sometimes dry heaving

christmas is next week but it doesn’t really feel like it in san francisco except for when we go to beeps burgers 

over speakers in the parking lot they play the radio station with all the christmas music and the charlie brown christmas music plays 

which is my favorite and all the palm trees on the sidewalk are wrapped with red foil bows but 

i can barely enjoy it 

my mind floating far away from this moment, from my body

flapping off like a flock of pigeons to someplace else 

someplace where i’m not myself 

my mom knows how i’ve been doing

she saw it with her own eyes a few weeks ago

when she visited before my birthday, before thanksgiving

she came to teach me how to sew curtains for the bedroom windows

and at target we try to pick out new towels (mine are almost ten years old)

but i can’t make up my mind on a color or pattern

the whole purpose of this visit is to pick out fabric and curtain rods

but i can’t do it, even this simple decision feels like too much pressure, how will i know that i’ll always like these towels

on the way home from the mall, no towels or curtain rods, i ask my mom about when she was younger, growing up

we exit the 280 freeway at ocean avenue, drive along the city college campus to formerly phelan avenue but recently renamed frida kahlo way

the k isn’t running these days (covid)

the traffic waits at the red light

my mom tells me about her old banking job, back when my parents were first married 

before they moved to san diego and had my brother and me 

they lived in la and they were expecting their first baby

but when my mom had him, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck

and he didn’t live

in the hospital they take his photo anyway

my mom debated about seeing the pictures until 

one day she decided to mail in the receipt to get the images from the hospital

and when she walked to the post office over a freeway overpass

a gust of wind grabs the envelope from my mom’s hands, swoops it up over the fence

down among the cars rushing below, the white envelope floating along until gone

and my mom can’t follow it anymore with her eyes

but anyway the banking job

so my mom said she got back after maternity leave

and her coworkers all ask her about the baby

and my mom has to tell them what happened 

and i don’t know how someone can pick themselves up after that 

and in the car i don’t want my mom to see i’m crying

that night for dinner i bake us a yellow potato pizza with rosemary and gruyere, olive oil and garlic

we have a bottle of red wine and salad 

after dinner we watch the joan didion documentary, but in the middle we pause it

to bake peanut butter cookies with reese’s cups like my mom used to make when i was a kid 

you bake peanut butter cookies and while they’re in the oven 

you rush to unwrap as many miniature reese’s cups as you can

to smush quickly into the center of the hot baked cookies

i cry as we gingerly unwrap each peanut butter cup

this simple task my mom has done so many times for my brother and me

for bake sales and the parish festival each fall when we were in catholic school

and once when i was in middle school, every trimester we had to write and give speeches in english (informative, persuasive, biographical, these types of speeches)

for one speech we had to teach something

so i taught everyone how to make these cookies 

and my mom baked a huge batch for my class

i cry over the peanut butter cups, for the way my mom tenderly unwraps each one

so laborious and such love

i cry for my mom who picked herself up after such tragedy 

and for the baby who was born and didn’t breathe

his initials on the calendar on february first — BLT

my eldest brother brian who i never got to meet

i dreamt about him once before my 13th birthday 

which we celebrated at moonlight rollerway

in the dream we are in the skating rink

i know it’s him, he’s older than me with hair light like mine, brown eyes like my dad instead of blue like my brother and me

in my dream he tells me happy birthday, he’s proud of me

this morning on the phone, when i tell my mom i’m feeling the same

she reassures me that i’m okay, nothing is wrong with me 

she says this is a weird time for everyone right now

though in her voice i hear one lick of worry

she says that probably i’m bored

i need to find something simple like dog walking 

something to do each day to occupy my time, distract me

my mind unoccupied has nothing to do, reaching out to far corners

dusty rooms and old memories, feeling small and floating

once at some boy scout spaghetti dinner another mom asks if i want meatballs or sausage

i am eight or seven and can’t decide so i say i’ll have both

and she says not both, only one

and i cry humiliated, feeling greedy wanting two types of meat

why this memory?

mom suggests i delve into a craft project, making those curtains

or even going to target, getting a paint by numbers kit just to keep me busy

have you been writing she asks and i haven’t been 

(because sometimes it’s hard to write about your life when you wake up at night

  and feel like the only soul adrift in the pacific, one raft bobbing towards something

  it’s too dark all around to know, new moon and the ocean reflects the sky like onyx)

she lists things i could write about:

write about grandma, all those horrible dinners she cooked (we laugh)

or my fourth grade teacher who pronounced so many words incorrectly

she said shepherds like shefferds and canoe she called canooey

remember she made you memorize the beatitudes mom asks

yes but she didn’t cover the poster hanging in class so on the test i cheated 

and once in class i complained of a stomach ache so i could go to the nurse’s for a little while

but instead she prayed over my stomach in front of the virgin mary statue at the front of the room

she asked mary to relieve my belly pains and i felt so guilty for lying 

i could write about the beatitudes, which jesus shared at the sermon on the mount

blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted; blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see god

in college i learned the beat writers — who i obsessed over in high school, they inspired me to move to san francisco, to write everything, obsessively, all the time, to capture something, some piece of life —

were called beats meaning tired or run down, but also from the word beatific 

meaning blissfully happy coming from the latin ‘beatus’ meaning blessed

just like the word beatitude which means supreme blessedness 

my mom says take care of yourself 

she says right now you are a helium balloon and you have nothing to anchor you

so you’re floating around but i don’t want you to hit a powerline 

maybe she means she’s worried she’s losing me or i’ll lose myself

i think of when i was fifteen and i couldn’t bear to be 

i kept losing my breath 

i told my mom and my dad from under the covers of her bed

that i couldn’t do it, i couldn’t keep going

and the next morning when she drove me to school, my mom said she called a doctor

she was too worried about me, the way i was talking

she scheduled an appointment for me to talk with a counselor

that day when i get home from school my mom says let’s get ice cream and rent movies

we leave for dairy queen and i have bare feet, i have to run back into the house for shoes

after that we pick up dvds at hollywood video 

my brother hasn’t left for college yet and we watch the movies and eat skittles 

the next day the counselor teaches me how to breathe slow, feel my belly and count

she says: there will be time to do it all 

the day after that my brother and I take the metrolink train from our mom’s in rancho cucamonga 

to union station where our dad will pick us up for the weekend

and on the train in my pocket i find one red skittle from two days before, a little symbol of hope

a  month or so after that, after my brother moved away for college, leaving me at home alone with mom and her mom

my dad’s mother dies

she has a stroke or a heart attack and not enough oxygen to her brain so it was dead 

they turn off the ventilator and babcia gasps one last big breath before she passes 

and at the cemetery after we bury her

my dad takes my brother and me over to brian’s little grave

this part of the cemetery where all the babies are buried, everyone calls them angels

the tombstones depict angels in flowing robes, long tendrils of hair wafting

(at christmastime my mom hated how many angels my grandma decorated with

all these stupid angels my mom got instead of a real baby)

on the phone my mom says okay, stop crying now with a laugh, but i can hear the tears in the very back of her throat

when she tells me you are my whole world 

i know she really means it 

when my mom was pregnant with me, they thought i would be born breech

so they made an appointment for a c-section right after thanksgiving

but then right before, i flipped around and my mom delivered me fine 

once i read that babies could be breech because of tension held in the lower part of the body

anxious and fearful women have a higher incidence of breech presentation(1)

i think about the first place i ever lived

inside my mom’s body, how brian lived there, then mitch

and then i came along upside down at first 

a baby may be in the breech position

because it is trying to get closer

to its mother’s heartbeat — 

to feel more connected to her

1. Northrup, Christiane. Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. New York, Bantam Books, 2010. 461.

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