creative nonfiction

An interlude of tranquility

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

Just one interlude of tranquility, please.

This instant! 

Is it somehow cognitive dissonance to demand an interlude much less an interlude of tranquility to manifest out of thin air?  I think so. 

Tranquility, I think, grows slowly.  It is not rushed, demanded, or ordered about.  It is a rock hosting moss – the green coating develops slowly and requires one to be still. 

Tranquility can be – is – precarious.  For most of us, it can be destroyed in an instant.  Soft falling snow on a peaceful landscape turns into a tree crashing through one’s roof.  Or frozen pipes burst.  Or the power goes out. The quiet happiness of home and hearth is destroyed in an instant.

To disassociate so rapidly from tranquility, deep and quiet and blissful, to stress.  To disaster.  To mayhem.  Is perilous

and

dangerous and damaging. 

A disaster of its own.

Modern life is not adapted for this.

The natural biological response for these incidents is for the primitive brain – the one we aren’t allowed to operate with in this the first quarter of the first century of the latest millennium – to take control. Due to this, because of this, as a direct result of this, our bodies and our brains are flooded with the chemicals that depend on fight, flight, or freeze, and we are allowed to do none of those and be deemed to be good people, good parents, good employees, good anything.

And they certainly do nothing to help us with the situation at hand.

But there we are — swimming (treading water or maybe drowning) in the toxic miasma of an old response inadequate to the disaster at hand.  And so we need an interlude of tranquility to reset and restore, which now feels like an impossibility. 

I can demand satisfaction.

Challenge the fates to a duel.

Rail against an unjust universe. 

Or I can sit quietly here with my right hand on my heart and my left hand petting the small, rhythmic breathing bundle of unconditional love known as Emmylou-the-Dachshund and wait for the moss to grow while I meditate on all the good things still available to me.

Childhood memories are potent.

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

The beach at the very end of what used to be Lawrence Road on the Kaneohe Marine base was one of Oahu’s less spectacular beaches. Unlike Waikiki, sand had not been imported from Australia to create a tourist-friendly spot to sunbathe. No. The beach was a gleaming black lava flow with large, jagged pieces of the black rock the Goddess Pele had tossed about, sitting atop the long-since-cooled lava flow of her anger that oozed across even earlier flows.

In this manner, the beautiful island was formed. The ancient path of Pele’s wrath was worn smooth by the eternal motion of the Pacific Ocean.  The water was a vivid blue that one can’t imagine until they see it for themselves — up close and personal.  The crashing waves were edged with white foam reaching for the sky. None of it looks real.

That shoreline smelled of plumeria and hibiscus. It smelled of coconuts lying on the ground in the bright tropical sun.   It smelled of salt and mildew and of decomposing small sea creatures trapped in the tidepools when the ocean receded.

I was a feral child crouched over a tidepool formed by smooth lava and the blue water of Kaneohe Bay. 

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The End Days

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

I have perhaps twenty more years of life left in me. Maybe less. Maybe a lot less.

The years have been kind. The years have been brutal. I have experienced great joy as well as great sorrow. Through it all, I hoped for a tranquil journey. Through it all, tranquility has been elusive. Fleeting glimpses here and there. Moments of contentment were rare.

But I had hope. I believed in someday. If I were organized enough, if I worked hard, if I was a good person, if… if…if… all would be well. Life would be like boating on a placid sea with a colorful sail rippling in the gentle breeze of deep summer.

I handled the chaos. The stress. The upheaval.

I was often overwhelmed, but I continued moving forward. I tended to my child, who was and is the love of my life. I tended to my house. I tended the garden that brought me glimpses of tranquility when hummingbirds fed at the trumpet vine. I tended to my job.  I was not so good at tending to my spouse. We divorced just shy of our twentieth anniversary.

These past twenty years as a divorced, perimenopausal woman have been chaotic and heartbreaking. I often quip that my New Year’s resolution is to be bored. I have been accused of being dramatic, but the drama invaded my life uninvited. I did not conjure it, nor did I encourage the spectacle.

When sent home to quarantine during the pandemic, I hoped for three weeks. Three weeks to hole up in my house and find my equanimity. Three weeks to figure out my life. Three weeks to decompress, regroup, and emerge again fortified and ready to take on the world.

The previous year had been eventful — much of it in not a good way. Still, there were things to celebrate. I turned 60, and my only child had a small destination wedding in Spain. I was the only person on my son’s guest list able to attend. His father had health issues, his grandmothers were too old to make the trip, and so on.

With some trepidation, I planned my first solo international vacation. I raided my 401K and gifted myself an epic two weeks on the island of Ibiza. It was my 60th birthday present to me. The expense was considerable. It was also my only child’s wedding. It was an escape from the stressfest that was my life, and I pulled out all the stops. Sixty! Who would have believed such a state was possible?

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The uterus is not a homing device.

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Photo by Mika Ruusunen on Unsplash

“The uterus is not a homing device,” Rosanne Barr screeched.  I was channel surfing and happened upon her eponymous sitcom just as she uttered that line.  I had never heard the saying before. It turns out that it is an old feminist slogan that is considered overused. 

I laughed out loud.  I did. I sat back and enjoyed the rest of the show.

I’m not much of a television watcher, but that one line hooked me.  Barr was blazingly funny and insightful until she wasn’t. I was a faithful viewer until she, and the show, went off the rails.

Neither my now-ex-husband nor my son can find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight.  I was the designated Finder of Lost Things. By the time I heard Rosanne say, “The uterus is not a homing device,” I was weary of always and forever spending my free time trying to find their lost stuff.

Something snapped, and one time, I quietly responded, “I don’t know where your jockstrap is. I put it away the last time I used it.” And that was my standard response unless the missing item was something important to me.

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