The Journey Towards Home

The journey towards Home can sometimes stray off the well manicured, linear, wide path onto more of a rugged trail. It is during these rocky and rough times that my body and soul search for fortitude and brace for impact. I have to resist all instincts to turn around and retreat. I have to keep walking forward. My body instinctively counterbalances itself and my bones become rugged. My muscles become more nimble. My senses acuminate. My heart bleeds and my hands grow calloused. 

These deer trails sometimes sneak up on me unexpectedly. Other times however I have previewed the map and knowingly walk out bravely onto the unpolished terrain.

Each one of these narrow twisting trails have marked me. I have grown accustomed to berry bush thorns, poison ivy, a dapple of sunlight, loose rocks, hidden streams, bears, baby bunnies, tree roots and blisters dancing over, through and past my body. As the rugged trail weaves its way back to my more manicured boardwalk I feel weathered, wrinkled and exposed.

Before stepping out onto the wide path again I remember the hardiness of the trail; the adventurous, spontaneous and lost nature of the trail and I hear myself congratulating herself for finding the wide path once again. These emotions become crisp as toast as I feel myself moving closer towards Home. I bottle this emotion and save it within my heart so that the next time, when my instincts are yelling at me to turn around, when the path veers off into rugged terrain, I will keep moving forward -- always towards Home.

This Home can allude many of us at certain times and we can forget which way the trail should be cut. Our rocky deer trails sometimes veer off onto sideways benders with no hope for rectitude. Even when your Home has been etched onto your soul sometimes it can morph into a wasteland of obscure shadows. There is no guarantee that we will all keep moving closer, towards Home.

Make sure you remembered to leave the lights on in your Home so that as you draw near you may always recognize it and not pass it by.

Decorate your Home with items that you love so that you will naturally gravitate towards it in times of confusion.

Carry a piece of your Home with you at all times. In the case that your heart is bleeding, this piece can be fashioned as a temporary Band-Aid.

Never lose your keys.

And during every moment of your brutish, nasty, rugged overgrown adventure continually remind yourself to keep moving. Never sit down.

I have stepped off my well manicured path. I have ventured down the rugged trail many times. I haven't yet found the wide lawn leading me up to my Home but I am continuing forward. Each moment brings me closer. I refuse to sit, my fingers linger over the keys in my pocket. I carry a piece of my Home in my heart and I have decorated my Home with items that I truly love. The lights are on. I think I can see it in the distance. I'll keep moving with the knowledge that every step takes me closer to my Home.

My Story

There is a moment between the moments that quietly beckons for my attention. The call is so small, a whisper on the wind, it passes and I faintly catch its whiff before it has moved on. The smell though sometimes lingers and I find myself walking through rooms of old memories, snapshots that loom larger than life; a museum filled with artifacts of a life long passed.

If, however, I am able to apprehend the moment between the moments, and heed it's calling I can slow it down, control Time, selfishly manipulate it to sit a while before moving on.  In these instances I catch the memories before they happen. I anticipate the wonder and bewilderment of the moment and within the stillness I can write My Story before it unfolds.

Bedtime for me has always been a hurry up, brush your teeth, go potty, let's read, okay goodnight type of routine. Thankfully for me both my kids have certain habits that slow me down.

My first born (my Loyal Companion) picks out a stuffed animal each night and I have to be the stuffed animal and I have to decide where we are going to meet in our dreams. My not so little Bundle of Joy asks me for butterfly kisses and she dictates where on her face these butterfly kisses will land. So many butterfly kisses.

When My Loyal Companion was a mere six years old our nightly reading routine included the Secrets of Droon series. These books propelled his imagination and set off a ritual of crazy adventures that he swore took up his dreams each night. Being the introvert that he is though, he always wanted a partner. After reading to him at night we would talk about where we wanted to go in our dreams. What adventures we wanted to have.

We imagined together a massive mansion, each room being a different adventure. Each night when I turned out the lights we would talk about our rooms and we would decide which room to meet up in when our dreams took over.   Some nights would be even crazier, with different color slides that would propel us into different rooms.

Over time these conversations were whittled down and unfortunately I  cannot tell you what the last room was that we entered together.

Stuffed animals entered into our conversation once and it became effortlessly easier for me to expeditiously pick out an animal and a place for us to meet in our dreams. I wrapped up the conversation neatly so that the lights could be turned out quickly.

Now, as I ask him which stuffed animal he wants me to be I am perplexed and a bit hurried. There is no time to imagine together. Plus he asks ME to pick out our dream location each night and sometimes, I have to admit, there is no creativity.  I fly through it too fast and I am gone. Gone downstairs to do whatever job didn't get done within the waking hours. He is left. Left to imagine alone. The moment between the moment has passed us by. The smell lingers. It wafts through the rooms. A museum of artifacts.

As I turned out the light and closed the door on my Loyal Companion's sister this evening my heart was only on the clock. One down. One more to go. Climbing the stairs I yelled out to my Loyal Companion that he better have his PJs on because it was time for bed. As I hit the last stair I realized that my Bundle of Joy had not asked for her ritualistic butterfly kisses. Is this how it happens? One day they realize that I am really not paying all that much attention?

I ran back to her room. She gazed up at me with sleepy, dreamy eyes. I confessed that I had forgotten our butterfly kisses and she opened up to me with one of the hugest hugs I have ever been given and I held on.  I had caught the moment between the moments and I refused to let it go.

It was too late as I turned out my Loyal Companion's light tonight. I was tired. However, a couple of nights ago we had started a new series, Spirit Animals, and as we closed the book I could not help but ask him who he thought his spirit animal was. A smile journeyed across his face and his eyes sparkled. He had an answer and as he talked I listened, deeply listened. When I turned out the lights I picked up his stuffed spirit animal and asked HIM where we should go in our dreams. As he conjured up an unknown suspenseful world I slowed down and allowed myself to imagine alongside him. I had caught the moment between the moments and I refused to let it go.

My Story unfolds itself in the space between the moments when I am not usually paying that much attention. As I gaze back upon My Story it overwhelms and saddens me that I have allowed myself to be so distracted within this sacred space. I am awake now, writing My Story before it unfolds. Allowing myself the space and Time for dreams.

Dear Soon to be Mama

 

"May we be fully present, here and now, aware of the gift of each moment.
May we pay attention with kindness to what is happening within us and within our children.
May our hearts open wide with compassion for ourselves, our children, and our world.
May we live fully in our bodies as we bless our families each day.
May we open to the great love and grace that holds us all.
May we care for each other and for the earth as we draw wide the circle of our family.
May we all find peace.
May we all be well."

Denise Roy, MOMfulness: Mothering with Mindfulness, Compassion, and Grace 

Leave all your expectations at the door. Do not, under any circumstances bring any baggage into the delivery room.  You will be carrying enough with you when you exit. Do make peace with your soon to be past self. Examine yourself closely and pick one trait that you will hold close to your heart. Let all others fly away with the breeze. They can and will be replaced.

Close your eyes. This is the hard part. Your body will need you after your bundle of joy is born but you will not be able to tend to it. This is the first sacrifice. There is no need to be scared of blood, for it is your own blood. Your body will heal itself without you. Your body knows that it has been abandoned and that you wont be coming back for a very long time.

Your bundle of joy will cry for a very long periods of time for no apparent reason. You will be rendered helpless. Your bundle of joy will also sleep for very long periods of time and you will also be rendered helpless. Take your helpless feelings and flush them down the toilet. Snuggling this package tightly whether they are asleep or wailing is all you need to do. Do not shove milk in their face. Do not wildly search the internet at 2am for answers. Do not yell at your partner. Just give love, unceasingly. This is the most helpful you will ever get to be.

Remember to listen to your gut. There is so much information out there. Don't let this information rule your life. Your instincts will sometimes have to take over. Have confidence in your instincts.  Do not let intellect get in the way.

Be smart. Learn to recognize your own panic signals. Do not under any circumstances confuse panic with instinct.

Remember to allow Time to cradle you. It passes so slowly. Nap with your bundle of joy. Laugh with them. Sing, dance and cry with them. Take each passing second as a gift. Settle into Time and allow it to slow you down. Learn to manipulate Time for these purposes but don't disrespect Time as you will find, it may be your last (and truest) companion.

Have patience and always show up with your smile.

When you find yourself alone, which will not happen often, do not give in to laziness. Take a walk, eat a healthy snack, take a shower or start a project. Your body will be happier and will thank you later.

Do not, under any circumstances, give up.  Adjust your sails routinely, hold fast to your commitment, and allow the breeze to carry you forward.

First and Last

 

 

 

The one problem I have with trees is that they don't get to decide whether they live or die. We don't get to decide either. Live this moment as you are seeing it for the first time and for the last time. Everything in between is a gift. A gift of time - nothing more, nothing less.

Turn Around



Memories should not be relied on to transport us back in time
but used to transport us into the future - our treasure map,
leading us through the memories to come.

Turn around. Look back. Remember to remember.

There are a few memories that have found a place close to my heart. They seem to rise above the rest. I have no photos from these moments. I have no witnesses. I have no proof that they even existed. I have never written about these memories. There are no Facebook posts to help me thread meaning back into my emotions. I have never, until recently, even uttered a word about the sequence of events that unfolded during these specific moments.

The difference, the reason I cherish these two moments, is that I remembered to remember as my memory (my moment) was unfolding. I looked back and turned around while in the midst of the memory. Many memories are manipulated by perspective. We conjure up what we can remember with the lens of who we are today. Our memories are colored by our perspective and this can subconsciously warp our identity.

However when we live within our perspective selves, always using our future self to help mold the moment our memories can truly be depended upon. And also so can we.

It was a quiet, breathless night. Our 100 year old house oozed sweat. Even with all the windows open there was no breeze. Our four month old had taken to only sleeping when on top of me and that made matters all the worse. Lying there drifting in and out of sleep I was remotely aware that I had started the sprinkler when there had been daylight. As I gazed out the window there was only darkness. I felt the time. It must have been pretty late. Hazily I remembered My Love getting the call. There was very bad news on the other end. He had left hours ago. A baby had died. Waiting for adoption paperwork, a baby had died. Died in her sleep. I was left alone with the heat, the darkness, my sprinkler and our first born son. I was breathless.

The weight of the moment punched me again and again as I would wake to dream. The darkness surrounded me. At each pelting of the sprinkler I imagined how much money we were wasting. My four month old slept soundly but I grew restless, weepy and lonely.

Then it happened. I made myself turn around. I looked back. My future self found me and comforted me. She showed me the sequence of events clearly as I had grown quite fuzzy. Together we reenacted the last several hours and I became more focused.  I felt the heat tickle my body. I smelled my son's hair and ran my fingers over his soft head. My body adjusted itself and I soaked up my son's breaths. My ears no longer were stressed listening to the wasteful sprinkler. The running water comforted my nightmare that had been pushed deep down within me. The death of a child. A baby. My future self held me in her arms and spoke harsh truths. These truths thankfully were wrapped in lullabys and I drifted back into a fitful sleep.

The moment had become crisp and clear at the edges. There was no fuzziness. And I remembered to remember.

I would love to tell you that I got up that night and turned off the sprinkler. That I put my baby down in his crib. That I took a cold shower. I would love to tell you that I rehearsed my conversation with my absent Love and when he got home that I held him in his moment of grief. But none of that happened.

If I had not taken the time to pause, to turn around, to look back and find my future self all of these moments may have happened. Over time memories can be corrupted into pretty little packages. But it was not a pretty night. It was brutish and ugly. I inhaled the emotions and allowed myself to quietly rest with my son on my chest until morning.

My future self and me met again within the same realm the day my second child was born. We smiled at each other for we had already experienced the pain of death together and we remembered to remember.

Memories pile up. They are the architect of our identities. But if our memories become perverted by time then are our identities also false?  Are we untrue?  Are our memories so easily manipulated?

It had finally stopped raining and my not so little bundle of joy and me were off to the park. She had a backpack full of spy gear and she was ready for an adventure. We climbed the play structure together and she haphazardly rambled about our spy game and its rules and definitions. When we reached the top she unzipped her backpack and handed me a pair of binoculars. I sat down and took a look. At that moment my future self held out her hand to me. She pointed out the newly returning birds perched in the treetops. She opened my ears and I heard the wind whipping and hollering. I smelled sawdust from the new housing development and felt the end of winter. I paused to remember. I looked back on the moment as it was unfolding and made it how I remembered it to be. That day my not so little bundle of joy and I took out many treasures from her backpack. We sat, watched, listened, smelled, wrote (yes she brought a clipboard) and whispered for hours. As our hands turned icy we in turn headed for home.

I would love to tell you that I snapped a hundred photos. That while playing with her, I was also trying desperately to read the latest "Mommy Blog" that would miraculously tell me how to be a better mother. I would love to tell you that I sat on a park bench while she played and I chatted with all the other moms, having deep conversations about what to feed our family for dinner. But none of that happened.

If I had not taken the time to pause, to turn around, to look back and find my future self all of these moments could have happened. Thankfully my future self and I had met prior. We had found each other again on top of another, different park structure, long ago, when my first born was only two years old.  I was working fulltime and the time I did get to spend at the park was a treasure. I remember pausing during one of these outings, reminding my future self not to waste a second. 

Memories can live in the past, continually warping and perverting our identities or our memories can live within the present, with a forecast upon the future, continually shaping our perspective. Navigating the waters. Our treasure map for what's to come. Dependable, trustworthy and reliable.

Dead Trees

Five years ago I watched helplessly as one of my favorite front yard Hemlock pine trees got sick and died. One spring morning I noticed a few brown needles. The next day I noticed that these needles were dropping to the ground in copious amounts. A few weeks later I was hard pressed to find any green on the tree. We took a clipping to a horticulturalist. He was stumped and told us that it must be some sort of disease and that our tree would eventually die.

By the end of summer it was dead and My Love cut it down. It made me sick.

The next spring this so called disease had spread and killed another one of my front yard garden trees. We never did figure it out. Both trees left a gapping hole in our front yard garden, never to be replaced.

I have heard that a tree can live forever, that if you could prevent it from being blown down or succumbing to drought or disease that it has unlimited growth potential. 

I grieved for these trees, for the privacy that they had given us and for the shade they afforded us in the late summer months. But mostly I grieved for that second tree. Without its partner's disease it may have gone on growing and living for an eternity.  It felt weirdly wrong to have to watch this second tree die. 

People can wither up as well. Healthy, strong, abled bodies can decay emotionally and physically -  riddled with afflictions, addictions, insurmountable hurdles and disease. It is a helpless feeling to watch someone decay. It is weirdly wrong though when this decay spreads into close relationships, families and friendships.

It saddens me that, more often than not, there is a "second" person who becomes the unfortunate benefactor of  this decay and the otherwise healthy person may begin down a similar path of afflictions, addictions, hurdles and diseases when their only initial fault was close proximity.


Emotionally I used to be a lot like my favorite dying front yard tree. I refused to admit it and helplessly watched as I tried to destroy my relationship with My Love, yelled at my kids too often, complained for the sake of complaining and drank myself into a state of feeling numb. It's not pretty. It makes me sick to even have to write these words. But it is the truth. I was not healthy and I was riddled with afflictions.

Most importantly though, my state of being was affecting the ones I loved. When that second tree died in my front yard garden I grieved more for it than the first tree. I had no idea I loved it as much as I did. Disease and decay spread. We pull others down into our abyss and regrettably they sometimes have no choice but to die along side us.

My constant yelling and crazy stressed out impatience with my kids was fostering disrespect, sadness, insecurities and distrust within our family unit. My first born's anxieties sky rocketed and his kindness towards other plummeted. My not-so-little bundle of joy had to learn to be tough, not show emotion and keep her childish ways in check.

Both of my children have been severely hurt by my lack of compassion. I unknowingly set up lifelong hurdles and afflictions that they will now have to battle alone.

My lack of gratefulness to and for My Love, my standoffishness and at times confusing brittle attitude pulled My Love down a hideous path of sarcasm, doubt, defensiveness and anger.  He began to tiptoe around my vacant spirit, learned to second guess my sporadic genuine feelings while keeping his own emotions tightly bottled.

I gave him these afflictions. His close proximity to me plagued him with handicaps that to this day he still has to battle.

I watched as my family was riddled with diseases. At the time I didn't think I had the power to change these situations so I began to numb my sadness with alcohol. I masked my self loathing with unending complaints of others. The drinks unknowingly added up until most of my thought space was taken up with thoughts of another drink. I had quite successfully riddled myself with disease and it was spreading.

Then one evening I remembered the second dead tree in my front yard garden. I remembered my surprise upon discovering that it was indeed this second dead tree that was my favorite. I remembered mourning for that second dead tree well after I had forgotten about the first dead tree.  I still sometimes wonder how many more healthy years that tree could have lived. Unlimited growth potential. Unfortunate proximity.

At that moment I decided that My Love and my children did not deserve to be that second tree. I loved them more than myself. They were my favorites and I was destroying them. I would endure my battles and fight to win not for myself but for them. I stopped drinking, learned how to calm my inner stressful thoughts, stopped yelling so much, started a path back to My Love and eventually ceased complaining about anything and everything. It was the most delicate, unyielding assault on my personhood. I put it all in and battled fiercely.

I am not proud that my family had to walk with me through the dark. I have given them unfortunate scars and wounds that may never heal. I am proud though that along with myself I am helping bring them back to life - one branch at a time.  We are connected through our roots and this proximity is more important to me than they will ever know.