I Belong to You

Hello again, my favorite empty white space. I've waited a long while to fill you up with the letters that make the words that make the fullest mind a little less full...until it fills up yet again with a thousand drip drops, like the puddle where gravel meets pavement at the end of my parents' just-outside-city-limits street. 

Three months and 17 days ago. That was the last time I visited this space to drop off some drip drops. There hasn't been much to say, at least not out loud or on the page (my internal dialogue is alive and well; who am I kidding, it's usually on a bender). Life in my hapless hometown is quiet but not calming, stuck in stark contrast to my place of peace—the roaring ocean whose waves shush me into meditative bliss. One thing has happened: A tiny-yet-enormous thing that I'm ready to talk about now. His name is Zion. Befitting a child of mine, he presented himself to the world late and the hard way.

Like my belly, the moon was full the day Zion and I met. It was midnightish as I sat in the backseat of my car next to my still-unnamed unborn child's car seat, propped up on a few towels to catch the broken water flowing out of me. I don't remember what my parents said during the drive, though I imagine it was choppy, nervous talk, headed off at the pass by my backseat nirvana. I wasn't in the moment but outside of it. The word that comes to mind is fretless, and like a guitar of the same distinction, I wasn't held down by the usual boundaries. For a guitar, those boundaries are real—thin strips of metal on the instrument's neck that create notes of varying pitch. For me, boundaries are figurative, thoughts I construct to either enjoy (often to a fault) or to fret over. 

I had insisted on having my baby at the hospital 45 minutes away from my parents' house because the one nearby didn't have the best reputation, which is why my mom had told off just about everyone there. My mom is the embodiment of Take no shit but do no harm, although she might've done a little harm in her younger days; only if they deserved it, of course. Mon General was a 45-minute drive. About 20 minutes in, I rolled down my window and stuck my phone into the January wind to take a picture of that full-belly moon. Then I sent myself an email that said only this: 2 am. full moon. I sent it so I would remember the details when I wrote about it one day, as I knew I would. 

Zion came via c-section after many hours of labor. I wasn't scared until the part where I realized my babe wasn't budging and they'd have to cut me open. Strapped to the delivery table in the OR, I frantically warned the anesthesiologist I can't breathe!, to which he deadpanned: You're talking—that means you're breathing. Thank God my own personal angel was there to tell me, as always, that I was okay while she peeked over the curtain to watch my subdued gynecologist lifting her first grandchild out of my guts. 

We're learning each other, my little Zion and me. One day all the nooks and crannies of my mind's attic will be filled with him, all about him. For now I'm lost in his stockpile of facial expressions, my favorite being the one where he grins and looks at me sideways from the corners of his eyes, which are the only parts of me I can find in him, and only when he smiles. Sheepish, I would call that look of his. It'll get him out of trouble when he's older, I just know it.

Mom and Zion are playing in her bedroom on the other end of the house as I type. I can hear her singing to him in her soft soprano. An angel singing to an angel. My singing isn't even a close second, but I try. My go-to lullaby is "Yoshimi" by the Flaming Lips, about a girl who has to take her vitamins to defeat the evil robots. If Zion could talk, I imagine he'd say something like "It's okay, Mamma, I like your singing, too." I'll teach him to find the good in things. I hope. 

At the other end of the house, Mom and Zion can't hear the singing coming from my current hang spot in Dad's office. It's not my voice; it's Ben Nichols' gullet-full-of-gravel on Lucero's "Mine Tonight." I'm not watching the video, just listening, over and over. It's not my favorite Lucero song, but it feels right for this day. I like when things feel right.

Within the first few flicks of the lead guitar, I was back in Memphis. Driving down Union Avenue toward the river, maybe with one of my dogs; or with my best girls E and J, skipping rocks or eating ice cream on the bank in Harbortown; or alone, sitting on the grass on the downtown side of the river because I never went to Harbortown alone, which is odd because it's far safer than all the other parts of town that I wandered solo. The great Mississippi River.  Admittedly, it was never all that great to me. Too aloof. What's a river you can't splash around in? You could, but you might die. No thanks. Nonetheless, the Mississippi found a place inside me, in one of those places I never discover until afterward, oftentimes through a song.

As "Mine Tonight" plays each time, I'm somewhere else in Memphis during my five years there. On my 30th birthday: at the Lucero warehouse with R and J, looking out the windows — whose rickety appearance matched the tattered pirate flag between them — onto Overton Park Avenue, imagining decades earlier when the the King of Rock 'N' Roll himself would climb the steps to that very space to take karate lessons. On one particular day, we were looking at the parking spots below, lamenting the Lucero van trailer getting stolen. Memphis was gritty, and that was part of the draw. 

Later, we took pictures of my dog, Kaiser, wearing a top hat. Kaiser went everywhere with me for the first two months in town because my other dog, Phaedra, was still in West Virginia with my parents and I didn't want him to be lonely. He had a habit of peeing in new places, but he didn't pee in the warehouse, not that it would've mattered given it was "home" to four unconcerned band dudes who were mostly punk but found themselves playing country music. Back in my tiny guesthouse, around 2 am or so when I was 30 years plus a few hours old, Kaiser and I slept in my new bed in the city we had inhabited for 19 whole days. I'm sure his head was on the pillow next to mine.

As I replay "Mine tonight," I have at least a thousand more memories of Memphis to type into this little white space. They'll have to wait. I write in stolen moments these days. Just now, Ben sang "tonight, she's mine."

Tonight—and today, tomorrow, and forever—I am Zion's.