little light

Walking with lightness across the past week, down sweet avenues of promise.

Fall asleep to the heartbreak of harshness, how we diminish and mistrust ourselves so deeply, how we salt our wounds at every turn. How we can love anyone but ourselves.

Awake in the courageousness of my heart, aware that I am good enough to be the mama I’ve become, the mama OWL needs. Aware that in this moment, perhaps that’s all there is, and that is enough. I awake aware that the unwavering presence of goodness that is so hard to touch still resides inside, and I am grateful that the week has illuminated it so vividly. But there is more work to do, always more do to.

And so it is just not time. Not for this.

With breakfast tea in hand, discover this quote, posted by the dear Mrs. Marit:

LOVE: when your energetic heart expands out of your body so far it explodes joy and color all over the world around you in such a way that all your beauty is reflected back at you. then your spirit says ‘Ahhh… that’s the purpose.’*

And so it goes, a cross town train and latitudes, into laughter and forgetting.

Regard all dharmas as dreams. Flip a card. Abandon all hope of fruition. Shuffle. Be grateful to everyone. Shuffle. Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself. 

(*from a Mountain Sage Medicine postcard picked up at Mother’s Market Pace in Hood River, OR)

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patterns. accidents.

The nature of grief, or at least mine, presents itself as cyclical. Seasonal. Marked by the harvest moons of pregnancy and breaking up, followed by would-be anniversaries that bookend OWL’s birthday, which is also the day of my haunted delivery into mamahood, a day of immense joy & gratitude joined by the rattle & hiss of an unshakeable failed start. And from this place, the world moves forward. I am motionless.

Is there a slogan for that?

Yup, Sarah replies. Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi*.

Mishaps. I say.

Love of all kinds is kind of a giant glorious mishap, eh?

And she lists the last 9 years of my life, my loves and disappointments, vows and friends lost to miles, and sends me a picture of grey skies and apple blossoms. I cry for the 7th time in 2 hours.

This morning nausea spread from behind my eyes and into my throat, hunger pangs, chills and fever. After an extra hour of sleep and pills, I put on a dress with a fancy sweater and scarf, leggings and boots to meet the dreary June rain, earrings and makeup, bravely applied mascara that is now long gone.

My words are hollow, circular. I cannot believe there is still so much letting go. Always there is letting go.

(* bodhi = wakefulness)

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friday afternoon gratitudes

This morning I said goodbye, one in a series of farewells as dear friends embark on tremendous journeys. In the past weeks I’ve also gotten home at 9:30 in morning, greeted 4 am by finally closing my eyes, introduced OWL to hot fudge sundaes, and developed a pre-summer Tom’s tanline across my feet.

Today I ate scout mint ice cream in the park after breakfast. I walked home in a snowstorm of purple petals. I thought about my 5 friends who’ve moved away in the past year, and the trailblazers who went before. Struck by the notion of moving without running away. Letting go and dying. Unopened boxes in the closet. What it means to stay.

I cooked rice. Steamed beets and a head of orange cauliflower. Made tea. Listened to Porcella.

And I don’t have much else to say, other than to offer gratitude for the good fortune of friends and for the ease of an unedited Friday afternoon.

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