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.
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.
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.
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.
"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!
I clean and empty the space around me, - the noise, stress, and stuff.
Every evening, after the sun sinks into pink, I seek simplicity.
During the day, I practice stillness amidst a household of happenings - of play and argument, screaming and weeping, laughter, and song. While I work too with young children in my classroom, I practice connecting to the stillness within.
I practice acceptance too. Acceptance of this house and all its holes. [I accept it by cleaning it with brush, water, and soap, scrubbing away stains, dust, and dirt.] Acceptance of my desire to want more and more material things like new brown boots, jeans, and candles. Acceptance of this human face and all its aging, its folds, tone, and color. Acceptance of these stark-white skunk-like strands of hair. Acceptance of the stretch marks and the occasional sharp chin hair. Acceptance of others and my own reflex to judge them. Acceptance of myself and my own reflex to judge me. Acceptance that everyone (including me) is at one necessary point in the journey. A point in a whole journey of points, points that make lines....................... lines like sunbeams, stretching outward and onward into expansion and evolution.
At night, I practice inner stillness. I follow a yoga class or a meditation podcast, and I write. I then attempt to carry my stillness (like I would a full cup of tea) into my sleep. When I wake, I hold it still.
Throughout the day, it spills, and I must practice acceptance as it soaks and spreads throughout my insides.
I carry my stillness by moving more slowly, and by doing one thing at a time. I heard that that's one definition a Zen master once gave for Zen, - doing one thing at a time. So I try ...and then I forget and try again. I slow down when I can, and hold my stillness, feeling for presence, stretching for it as I would a lamp switch in the dark.
Slowly, I am stripping away the layers and unveiling silence, simplicity, serenity, and clarity.
I realized recently that I have a tendency to hide. It's no wonder hide-and-seek was my favorite childhood game. We are born to be in community. We also need solitude. I notice this piece of me, this desire to hibernate, to seek silence and stillness and darkness, to hide.
Today, I turn 39 years old.
My birthday wish is that I will not hide so much anymore, but seek, - seek connections, community, and seek this whole world around me.
I am the witch at the edge of the woods I am the woods I am the owl in her hand I am the roots of her bones I am the seed of her egg I am...
