Now is the winter of our discontent

made glorious by the lengthening of days;

patiently coaxing the bold crocus

to smile brightly in their pretty skirts.

Every spring I feel like I have to give birth to myself and this year is no exception. While fighting to wriggle through the birth canal I fear that I might actually have lost my way and be burrowing into my grave.

This year all that drama was held at bay by the reconstruction of our restaurant, Casa Romero, after a flood from a broken pipe in the building above us destroyed the main dining room. Because my attention had been riveted to the project from December 25^th until February 16^th I had hardly even noticed the strangle hold of deep winter. All’s well that ends well, said I, when the last carpenter and painter trundled off down the highway leaving us with a sparkling new Casa.

 I hopped blithely back on my horse, raised my lance and charged into action, riding full tilt into the tournament of literary endeavors, in this case the continuation of  The Mermaid and the Sailor, the third volume of  my trilogy, Glamour Galore, which I have been threatening  to unleash on the public low these many moons.  

It was then that I noticed I was astride my steed backwards. A condition that rapidly disintegrated into the prenatal struggle as described above which, much to my horror, evolved in a Freudian direction of subterranean discomfort also mentioned above.

As any good midwife would advise, I breathed deeply and pushed! Unfortunately my psyche had not evolved to the human level and I was stuck in the dirt of despair wondering which way was out?

Have you ever wondered how a tulip bulb knows which way to grow? Presumably if it is the second time around, the sleeping beauty is already pointed in the right direction. But what if you were plopped in the earth last fall by a distracted gardener who pointed you stem down, what then? Deep breathing and pushing may not be quite the solution.

But the salvation of mucking about in the compost of my psyche is its intrinsic complexity from which all manner of snippets percolate if left to their own devices.  And so in the darkness of the dawn I heard the distant voice of Anaïs Nin whispering,         

“The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.”

This then is my visceral account of giving birth to myself and because the result of that  leaves one with a bundle of joy who must be nurtured for an inordinate time I have returned to my blog for immediate gratification so that my tiny squeak may someday raise its voice and shout out, ‘Here I am!’