Skip to main content

Proud


The phone rang.
"Hello", I answered.
"Hi Mom", his voice replied.
My sons new big boy voice. My heart leapt, love seeping into every cell and creasing my face with joy.
"I've made a decision", he said. "I am done trying to be someone else. I am not my Dad. I am not just a Jennings. I am Owen and Owen is special. I have been bullying myself for a long time and bullies make you feel small. I am not a punk or a bully. I am special as I am." I choked back the tears rising into my throat. He went on, "I used to believe that God made all your choices for you. Now I believe that I have a will of my own and I can cast my own vote. I have decided to chart my own course and follow my own destiny. I can be an ordinary person or I can be a great man. I will be a great man by following my heart." My grin threatened to break free of my face and dance with the hummingbirds gathering red liquid from a feeder nearby. "I feel as if I have been on a great ship, lost in a typhoon for a very long time and now the storm is over, the sea is calm and I can see for miles around. I am going to chart my own course now, but I will always come home to you and I will always come home to my Dad." I cried now, swallowing the salty foam of sea spray and purpose. He was suddenly a man talking of politics and war, philosphy and hope. I was breathless. "I am gonna go now mom. Oh, by the way. I am not going to be mean to you on the phone anymore. It is time to end that Ice Age. I love my mom and that is that. Talk to you soon."
He is seven.
I am proud beyond the scope of words.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

tree digging

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much.  It was only about 5 inches in diameter and 8 feet tall.  The root ball was no more than 3 feet deep.  But it was a sweet red-bud tree that we planted the year Bodhi was born, his placenta was buried in it's roots and like many of the trees in our neighborhood, it died (see this post to understand why) . I can't say that I mourned its death in a tangible way, rather it produced in me a sort of unnameable melancholy.  I am a woman who loves the spring.  I nearly live for it.  When the first signs of life emerge like a haze of hope, I drink in green with the passion of a desert crawling woman sipping at an oasis.  I gorge.  This year has been hard.  Our neighborhood isn't leafing out in native splendor, instead the tired trees seem to begrudge the effort, only offering a tender shoot or bud occasionally.  The north side of many trees appear to have given up all together, too tired after a long winter...
2 comments
Read more

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment.  It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float.  It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within.  It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains.  Eyes closed.  Eyes opened.  A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being.  It takes courage.
4 comments
Read more

connection

It has been an interesting few weeks.  I have been contemplating connection a great deal as a basic need of being human.  I watch my fellows rushing from one place to the next, gathering technology to themselves like talismans of protection against the emptiness of separation- a perpetual flutter of texts and calls and music and smart phones and GPS and more.  Yet so many of us are longing for the central cord of union- with one another, with ourselves, with life.  It's as if we are frightened of being disappointed, so we retreat deeper and deeper into the tight orbit of self.  My teacher recently filled me in on a little secret...the meaning of life is to LIVE IT .  That isn't tidy or safe.  It is messy and vulnerable and unpredictable and unknown.  And yet LIFE extends an invitation to us in every moment asking us to unleash the breathtaking beauty hidden in our hearts and experience, EXPERIENCE, experience life.  Life isn't singular. ...
3 comments
Read more