Strong and Vulnerable

Six days of this coughing, of this barking and gasping. 

A doctor listens to her lungs and says that it may linger.

That's all. 

It may linger.  

Rest and drink water. 

Through illness, the seven-year-old child learns that she is both strong and vulnerable. She learns that she must surrender to slowness and stillness. For when she doesn't, when she moves too quickly or too suddenly, she succumbs to rattling fits of hoarse wailing. 

She wants to be close. She wants peppermint tea with honey. She wants to wedge her slender body into the folds of the couch. 

We must surrender to her illness. We must remember patience and resilience.  We must remember that we are both strong and vulnerable.  

She remembers that she abhors medicine. Last night, it took one hour, two spills, gagging, weeping, and a full mug of tea for her to drink a doll-sized cup of cough syrup.  And she doesn't even get it all down. 

This morning, she bellows big wet growls from her bed. 

Oh, my darling. I'll put the kettle on. 

cold tub

I crank open the bathroom window, inviting the air of January to enter. 

I fill the tub with soap and salts and cold water. 

I strip and stand, observing my reflection. Look at this body. So strong. So worn. So human.   

The tub is half full. I'm not sure I will last very long and I don't want to waste water. The last time I tried to take a cold shower, I lasted only a few seconds before lunging for my robe.  

I turn off the nozzle and look one last time at the water. I step in. My feet tingle as I stand on bits of bath salt. Soapy foam surrounds my ankles. 

Can I be present for this? Can I listen closely to my body? Can I ignore my head and all its thinking?

My feet don't sting. Instead, it feels like an opening, like my skin is absorbing and inhaling, brightening. It feels awake. 

I kneel. I then sit, gripping the sides of the tub. I put my hands in. My arms. I have preemptively slathered shampoo onto my hair so that I would need to wet my head. I reach back and dip my scalp. It is both thrilling and chilling. I sit up and the hair drips down my dry back. I shake and gasp. I pull my head forward and dunk. Then back, dropping all the way in and under the water. Woah.

I stand. I am not running for my towel. I feel alive. I go back in. 

I stand again. I wait and then step out. Five minutes have passed. I take my towel and look again in the mirror. Has the cold transformed me? Perhaps. I hug my hair and body with towels and drench my face and neck with cream. 

Before I go upstairs to my bedroom, I stand in the backyard with only my towel. I want to know what it feels like to dip in a river in winter, to stand on the cold stones of a shore. Somehow, I don't shiver. 

I go back inside and upstairs. I dress. 

Is this one way I can practice presence? Is this one way I can settle into the stillness of single-tasking? Is this one way I can cure my pattern of peacemaking, by starting with myself? To face potentially important pain with bravery? To not run and hide and flee, but to learn, time and time again, how to be bold. 

I love looking for contemporary tools that show me my human nature, and my ancient body. How long were humans bathing in cold rivers to wash off dirt and odor? How long were we standing in sea and river, barefooted, to fish and forage? How long were we gathering water from snow-lined streams, ponds, and waterfalls? A long long time.  

We are so bundled now in our privilege of polyester and goose down. We are so warm in our layers of wool and cotton, in our insulated walls of wood, paint, and plaster. How much does this separation between humans and nature hurt our earth? And how much does it hurt us? 

Open!

 

"Open the window all the way." He says. 

With my arm around him, we sit and stick our faces out into the air.  We are up with the trees at the top of our wooden house.  

We hear the birds crying out to one another. We call to a neighbor and her dog. She tells us about deer tracks. 

After a while, I wrap him in a blanket. 

He won't go or close the window. He wants to be here, looking and holding the cold in his mouth. 

A Saturday in Late January

I have one hour to be alone. 

I go to the woods. 

I taste the stream, while moss and snow and stone lie in stillness, observing without judgment. For they too have tasted this place. I find snow on a downed tree and taste that too. It is better than I remember.  

Two hours later, I return with my children. 

Leo's yellow rain boots splash and sink into the silt and stream. 

"More!" He begs as I lift the cup of my palm to his open mouth.  "More!"

The water tastes like winter, like cold clouds. 

Amelia drinks until her hand stings. She has a cough so deep she sounds like a wild goose.

The children run and stumble over stones and bending flora before we throw sticks over the side of the footbridge and watch as they sink, stick, spin, and swim. 

We have one last slurp of the stream before we leave, feeling happy and weary.

Bold

My cousin swims in the cold ocean. I want to be that bold. 

Oh! - how my writing is full of such wanting. 

I turn on the shower and stand under the hot water. Then I nudge the nozzle to warm, then cool, then cold. A few seconds pass before I turn off the shower and lunge for my towel.

I was born into mourning. My uncle died at sea while I burrowed in my mother's warm wet womb. Is this why, I wonder, I sometimes feel heavy with sorrow? And why I try to prevent and fix pain - for me and others. As soon as I spot a hurt, I attempt to mend it with the needle and thread of my mind. If it cannot be mended, I go. 

The world is full of sadness, a cacophony of despair! ---Say this is my earliest absorbing. Say this is my earliest awaiting.  

For years, I have trudged through books, an explorer searching for a new world. A world where there is no sorrow. A world where everyone is healed and whole. 

Perhaps, this acknowledgment of my unconscious quest will lead me toward lucidity and healing.  

The Buddha spoke of pain and the end of suffering. He said, "Pain in life is inevitable, but suffering is not. Pain is what the world does to you, suffering is what you do to yourself by the way you think about the 'pain' you receive. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." 

 

Pain is essential and indeed inevitable. But the suffering (the inner wounds perpetuated by fear and disillusionment) can be unlearned by books, stillness, silence, and time. I cannot stop all the suffering in the world. However, I have power in my inner world.

I was born into peacemaking, into soothing my mother's wounds with the daily work of motherhood, of busy days with another babe. This is where my journey began. And now, at age 39, I am settling into clarity. It is the mind. It is the being. It is the body. It is the journey. It is the search and find of self. This too is living... though it is missing something. 

It is time now to set down the books and step out into the old wild world. Yes, she is swollen with sorrow, and vibrating with joy. She is burning and flooding, blowing, and growing. She is blurry and brilliant, vibrant and violent. None of it is all good. None of it is all bad. It all is what it all is - spectrums upon spectrums of light and color and texture. 

When I fall onto days of dense gloomy grays and puddles of glossy blue, it is a sadness for the profound separation I feel from the old wild world, - loneliness for Mother Earth, adventure, and the thundering bellow of my booming heart. It is time to swarm the warm light, soft colors, and string instruments. It is time to sing a rainbow of sounds and swim in a symphony of snow. It is time to expose my body and soul to the cold. 

It is time to be bold. 

Spins and Spins

I went into the woods alone. I didn't say a word. 

Oh this magnificent earth! - how she lies down for us as hill, river, leaf, and valley. How she holds the roots of these old wise trees. How she turns and turns from sun to stars to sun to moon. And how she is smooth, watery, curvy, gritty, crumbling, and cycling. How she turns and turns, her wheels of weather, of prey and predator, of birth and death. Watch as she spins and spins, juggling, while we humans poke and prod her body, as if she were dead already and beneath a sheet awaiting autopsy. 

too much me

When I feel whole, I am a small sun, burning warm, nourishing light. When I am in fear, I worry that I am a tall fluorescent bulb, squinting eyes, and aching heads. It is during these moments of fear that I wonder if I am too much, too much me. 

And so off I go to be alone, to hide and hide 

at home.

Leo at Two

"I'm so glad you're here." He says. 

"I'm so glad you're here too, love," I tell him. 

"'nuggle me, Mumma!" He asks, and I wrap my arms around his soft small middle. "Tank you, Mumma. I luv you, Mumma. You're my best fwend. I luv you so much!" 

There was a night recently when he sat on my chest and started bouncing. 

"What are you doing?" I asked him. 

"Making mama laugh!" 

It's true, he was. 

He is fueled by laughter the way I am fueled by coffee, nature, writing, good conversation, and books. He is a connection seeker. 

See me! 

Laugh with me! 

Share with me the joy of presence and play!