“If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?” - Kabir
To my friends — I see you and I know you are doing your best to keep moving forward...
< if reading via email - please click on "View entire message" >
In the old days of the west, the cowboy broke a horse by tying it down. He would then bite the horse’s his ear so a ranch-hand could throw a saddle on . The cowboy would jump on the tied down horse and spur his/her sides to pieces until the horse quit jumping and just stood there quivering.
I stood there quivering.
Broken — parts of the spurred pieces fell to the ground. Skin never returned to be neatly sewn back in place.
When writing becomes anchor to memory there is no amount of creative cleansing to bear down on scars. Gasping, I am unable to erase words with doodles. Like a horse, I have a good memory for pain.
The first few years after — May was a time of adjustment. Spring visits home to see mom without dad. Without. Many holidays spent alone. The last few Mays spoke softly of classical music events created from old passions.
May, when we are expected to spring forward, as flowers bloom and bunnies are born. May’s terror of fear, torched buildings, shattered graveyards, toppled history. May constantly yearns to be Spring again so it can shine over August, November, January — estrangement, illness and death.
I am the leaving. The small child running away from the metal giant with enormous wings screaming “I am not going on that big plane!” Fast as my small feet could carry me toward home like the child locked in her room, in May, as friends came to say goodbye.
I can only say hello.
I yearn to be Spring.
It was the beginning of the worst and the best. The worst of people removing the best of my spirit. The alienation came back in a cerulean October sky fastened in October-style parties going forward. The between days so close in distance, yet lost somewhere in the apathy of severed limbs.
The last days of May were all about saying goodbye to the beauty we narrowly regained. Bonds melted away returning in new form, pasted deep in my heart. Moments. I am hopeful the future brings lingering quality time.
The reality is that life moves and months turn to years.
Excitement and the promise of a new adventure is upon half of our small family. We couldn’t be happier for them in the complexity of carrying partial sadness. Rare gatherings, siblings chatting, cousins playing, are a thing of the past for now. We know this is normal in many families. I never knew the purity of connection to cousins, or most of my family — so the dream has remained a dream carried throughout my life. In marriage, no matter how much I yearned, or tried for the sake of my own children, it remained rather contrary, if not teeth pulling.
Adults can be walls of adversity, and in that indifference, years of missed opportunities. Whether family, friends or neighborhoods. There’s an old saying, “be careful what you wish for.” It’s internal, yet holds a scent, others can smell. I craved what was always at an arms length until it beckoned me backwards with it’s shove.
Eventually I stopped reaching for home in others.
I broke down this May. It all came flooding back in the cerebrum of my gate. It lasted two days in cursory form. I didn’t fight it. But I am moving again around the arena, head held high, kicking up some dust, heaping it over the past. Will it completely settle next May? Each of our individual pains are not comparable for we are all created and wired uniquely.
The human heart does not measure loss.
Five years ago brought a fallout which still remains in remnants on the ground today. We’re all trying to carefully step over them, when all we want to do is gather, stitch them in, and paint ourselves black forever.
Instead — we mourn the outlier.
We must go on — in search of Spring.
Rebirth.
Peace with what was and what is.
In life there are longings. Sometimes the longings are sweet memories packed into a single day. On those days you grab hold tightly, store them in your treasure box and trust heaven will greet you in His time — cradling these jewels.
I am exactly where I am supposed to be following familiar forms of creativity lead by something Greater than myself. When I don’t believe that anything I am doing is for any kind of purpose I still trust like a child that I am living, skipping and breathing in that purpose — with abandon. Savoring something within my reach. Knowing in my heart, I am the leaving… I am also the loving and the loved.
Ropes are broken.
Skin is shed.
June is here.
I hold these arms around you.
The short film above probably won’t mean much to those of you reading this, but it means the world to me. I never wanted all or nothing in life. Just the magical moments of ordinary days. The sound at the end is my favorite part. May 24th will forever be in my heart. The simple pleasure of having all our grandchildren together under our care for a few hours.
On May 30th, John’s older brother, best friend and mentor, would have turned 72, which brought back memories of his sudden death in January. Life is precious. It was the last day of consistent weekly babysitting (eight years) for my daughter — preschool days are over. We also said our official goodbyes to our oldest son, wife and granddaughters. We are blessed.
“As a child, when I first heard the story of Creation, I’d close my eyes and picture the earth as a ball rolling off the palm of God and into dark space, then drifting around until it found its home in sunny orbit. Never perfect, but ever spinning, and holding on to her course, despite it all.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days
Three years ago today I published my first story. Thank you for your support,
deb ox
Grateful for this kind and supportive community. ox
(there are so many more people - but this is off the top of my head)
Video Music: Under the Same Sun by Ben Howard
Share this post