My Moment

I turned off my phone and did not turn it back on until the following evening. It was a whole day without split attention. A temporary narrowing of external influence and inundation. 

A pause. 

When I shut off my phone, I immediately feel at ease. After several hours, I feel free. 

It quiets the internal itch for distraction, the tease and tug to look beyond the reality of the moment. I want to be in my moment. To be in my home. It might be a little boring or unpleasant sometimes. Here there are children occasionally arguing, weeping, or whining. Here there may be low cold clouds and wet winter wind. There may be floors to vacuum, dishes to wet and wash, and laundry to flap, fold, pile, and put away. 

I love it - this hiding. For no one (aside from my children) can find me.

Here in my moment, I settle into silence, stillness, and presence. I attune to the energy, emotion, and play around me. I too am like a child in my simple single attention. 

When My Longing Left Me

I was in a time of longing, of wanting what I didn't and couldn't have. I am prone to this sometimes. I think many of us are. I would look for a home on the edge of a meadow. I would look for land beside a mountain. I would look for a farmhouse with a garden. I would look and look. Then one day, I understood. We cannot go anywhere. We can barely afford this house, this life, let alone a fancier fantasy one. And with this obvious realization, my longing left me. Truly. It could have felt like a trap or a prison, but instead, it feels like rooting and reaching. 

My acceptance blesses me with inspiration. Suddenly, I am energized to organize and simplify, clean, garden, and run with the children. To take them to the stream, and to the boulder where the tree grows from its mossy belly. Through acceptance and gratitude, there is an opening, an invitation for spiritual investment and abundance. Here! Look at all this around us. We have everything we need. Let us live within our means. It is a small house, yes. And yet, I wouldn't want one bigger. Therefore, let us repaint the walls. Let us take old clutter to the dumpster. Let the children and I plant vegetables and berries on a small plot in the community garden. 

No place is perfect. No place is happiness. It is the embrace of the present moment. It has and is everything. Yes, it is this simple.

I have one hour.

I run for my coat, hat, and boots. 

Once again, I go to the woods. 

Look at the ordinary glory of the moment: the frozen mud, paw, hoof, and boot marks, and the gold and olive mounds of moss over stone. The woods in winter are bare and yet cluttered with monuments of life, from the murmurations of migration, to the scurrying squirrels, to the fringe of fern and pine. Dry lines of grass bend into mangled waves. The air is cold and clean. Streams drip, rush, curl, and gather into puddles, pools, and ponds. Everywhere, the leaves of history lie in delicate layers and ruffled piles, torn pages from the books of oak, ash, aspen, and birch. 

I walk with a paper notebook in my pocket and a pencil in my hat. Turn the world into words! And allow words to turn me back toward the world! 

Oops, I only have an hour! 

Now, I must run!

Up, around, over and through, to the road, to the road, I go!

I pause, panting, listening, 

Oh you silly humans, the cool woods call, always in such a hurry!

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.