Skip to main content

walking the path


I am staring into the face of 35, it is coming, not here yet but I can hear its footfalls approaching down the hallways of time. They don't seem to be skipping either, they seem to be plodding in my direction. That alone is enough to make me shift uncomfortable in my proverbial seat, however instead, I am staring, clear eyed at the face in the mirror, with the lines and furrows, each one reminding me of the road and occasional hardships that marked the way. It is interesting. Getting older carries a unique set of questions and conundrums. The twenties seemed marked by infinite possibilities and disproportionate dramas. Without the frame of reference granted a person through years of living, every little thing loomed large, every break up... unbearable, every joy...all encompassing. The thirties are different. I feel a more solid foundation beneath my shifting feet, certain that this too will pass...what ever "this too" may be. Yet my horizon seems to be shrinking. I no longer believe that I can do all the many incongruent things I once imagined. For instance, I don't think the wandering, gypsy can reconcile herself with the Montessori teacher, mate and mother of two boys. I no longer believe that I will become a great sweeping academic astounding the multitudes with my brilliance, nor do I imagine that my art will move mountains and gain great acclaim. I doubt that I will write the next great American novel, nor do I imagine that I will be a great saint, clad in white and raising the dead. No, I am somewhere else, on a path that is uniquely mine and somewhat mundane. I don't know where it will lead or even the terrain through which I will travel. But I do know that somehow I set foot on a distinct path, without really noticing it and I am walking sometimes blindly, occasionally wisely in the direction of my own making.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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.

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...

grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...