dry and dusty
After a week of delightfully hot weather, Seattle gave us a storm this morning. Thunder to shake your bones and window panes, lightening to remind you of your smallness, and marvelous, glorious, cleansing summer rain - torrents and torrents of it.
I had to go out in it. I had to let my dry soul refind its way back to flexibility and grace. I felt a Victorian-like madness come over me, as if I were Catherine Earnshaw with her crazed hair and soaked petticoats, aimlessly wandering the Moors for something she cannot name.
There are at least two sides to everything. A first, I tilt the camera to capture the radiant light, to show you how the rain illuminates the pink on my fushia. Then with the slightest movement toward the sky, the fushia goes black, the grays of life come to play. Same plant. Same day.
Is it our duty as healthy humans to feel both the dark and the light, simultaneously? Or is it a matter of knowing they both exist; feeling them is irrelevant. Maybe we are supposed to dramatically know one today and then tomorrow wake to a new companion of mood.
It's odd, this staying home stuff. Yesterday I went to the chiropractor and felt like a new person, just for the interaction of the breeze in my car and the wonderful laides at the office. I sleep, but the sleep comes in sporatic succession. Joel and I awkwardly fumble around our new duties, like newlyweds deciding who will do the dishes. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when I can barely be human, I feel the tears of self pity as I care for Bowie. Then, even through their misty lens, my eyes see more clearly than ever before what a privildege I have to be with her right now. My wise friend Leif recently wrote to me, "Remember that she will never be this tiny again. This applies to every day of her life." Many parents tell me to enjoy it, that they miss the baby time. So I try, I really do try hard to be present. Then I border on self-judgement and just before I fall pray to that angry precipice, Emily reminds me that whatever I am feeling in these next precarious weeks (elation, immense sadness, etc), to not judge it too harshly. To just let it be, let yourself alone.
My Mum leaves tomorrow, marking the end of our live-in help. Bowie will also be two weeks old tomorrow. While I dread my mother's absence (you should SEE how clean this house is and how well-fed we've been), I also know it's time. It's time to test out my wobbly mother-hen legs. It's time to communicate more vulnerably with Joel, it's time to learn to reach out to the community around me if I need help. Do keep us in your thoughts.
To benevolent and wise weather systems,