My son and I read a lot of books together.
Most days “Dinosaurs and all that Rubbish,” by Michael Foreman, makes the cut. It’s a book about a capitalist man setting out to a distant star, and while Earth is vacated, the dinosaurs come back to life and return the scorched, rubbish laden Earth to its former glory. When the man returns to Earth, because the star was boring, he is only allowed to stay if he expands his heart to be as big as a dinosaur, and vows to both care for our beautiful planet and share it, so that all living species may thrive.
Not only do my son and I read a lot of books together; books inform our lives.
Today we talked to the dinosaurs who live underneath the earth. They were asleep. I sat before my altar in my Grandmother’s very old and very orange floral, 50’s polyester housecoat. The one with the shiny orange buttons that she gave me last summer, the last summer before I came to this city where the dinosaurs live below us.
My son joined me after awhile. After prompting me to awaken and converse with the sleeping dinosaurs, and watching me construct a make-shift tent out of a sheet to do so, he was hesitant to actually come into the tent. Maybe he thought I could rise them up all by myself. Maybe he picked up on his father’s pragmatic disbelief. Maybe, since they had not awakened, he came in to help.
I think he came to sit close. He sat very close.
The candles were burning. Candles of women saints that form part of my magical goddess menagerie. These are the ones I brought to our new home to illicit a sense of womanly wisdom and earth-based purification in a sea of unknown concrete. The white and reds reflect and bounce and I think they somehow protect us. We patiently sat at our altar secure under our sheeted tent.
My son’s father is now convinced I’m a little crazy. He laughs at he calls my “kumbaiya” approach to life. This time he takes a photo.
I resume. As a mother, I consider it my job to foster innocence, curiosity, openness, love and connection to Spirit in my son. The candles offer a sacred light under our tent. Guadalupe, enter. We nestle closer. We talk to the sleeping dinosaurs. Full of hope, we ask to awaken them so they can break through the earth’s rotting crust and bring new life to our planet. Start the earth anew, expand hearts.
My son looks up at me. He sits very very close.
We dream.
We conjure.
We wait.
We believe.
(For Sebastian, who believes)
© 1998