Nothing in my world is certain but “this too shall pass” which is my stock answer to everyone and anyone who asks for advice. Good or not, whatever is going on will be interrupted by change.
Sometimes I let my guard down, thinking I’ve reached a state of stasis where the pattern of my life is on a path that has been steady (sometimes unrelentingly so) and I think, This is it. This is what my last twenty years are going to look like” and then the Universe laughs at me and drops a boulder on what I thought would be a steady path.
John Lennon said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
Well, this time the Universe dropped a boulder ON me and I’ve been trying to carry the damn thing down the path. Finally, I realized:
Put the damn boulder down. There there. See how nice that feels. Walk around the damn things or crawl over them, but they’re not to be carried. And while you’re at it, clean out that backpack. You don’t need all that shit. And get some sturdy hiking boots while you’re at it. You are not a forest nymph – bare feet for these, the last 20 good years, are going to require support and thick soles.
I think they call realizations of this magnitude epiphanies.
I know this too shall pass, but what I thought was an impasse is simply a wake-up call. All my life, I’ve had to switch paths. I have no idea why I clung to this one. It wasn’t headed anywhere particularly interesting.
So, I’m heading into the forest where there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my. I hope to find the Emerald City. I could use a spa day.
Will I ever experience gentle west winds again or will they fill me with fear and remembrance from here on out.
Trauma creates deep wounds that never quite heal despite all the scar tissue. Ready to open up and bleed at the slightest provocation.
The windchimes, the ones of wood and copper handmade and tuned to a melodious phrase (I forget which key) by a company named Woodstock may be gone. Or perhaps they’re in the debris left behind.
I used to love listening to them when the wind rustled on a summer evening. The setting sun glinting on the copper. They sounded like my heartstrings thrumming in contentment. During storms, they played a symphony of strong emotions. I wonder what they sounded like when the tree sheared off.
Did the tree scream?
Research now tells us that trees communicate with one another, have friends, and have a mechanism to help a struggling friend who is sick or malnourished or dying of thirst. Is my forest in mourning? Are they pumping nutrients to the stump? Are they singing a dirge when the west wind blows?
Much of the trunk of the tree still lays in my yard. I need someone to cut two four-inch or so slabs. I want a remembrance of that tree for me. One for my son. Charcuterie boards? Maybe. Something. I have a friend who is a serious woodworker. Perhaps she will have an idea.
But I want that wood sheltered in my home. The one miraculously still standing. My heart home.
I’m in shock still, but able to recognize my good fortune. My house should be collapsed. It wasn’t built to sustain such a hit. The tree was old. I’m guessing the diameter was 36 inches or more. I hugged it a time or two.
Years ago, now, perhaps 15 or more, I planted a variety of climbing hydrangea. It grows wild in the forests of Japan. It needs shade and the north side of an oak tree to thrive. It had both. Slow growing, it had just started to take off – flowering its tiny white flowers in June. I hope I can salvage it – move it to another oak tree.
My garden looks like a war zone. The same wind that sheared my tree threw my lawn furniture, fountain, and garden tools around. I’ve no doubt lost a lot of work.
But my house still stands.
Hallelujah.
Yes, Hallelujah in the vein of Leonard Cohen. Perhaps I’ll write my own verse to that masterpiece.
I offer up my own verybroken hallelujah. Grateful. So grateful.
Dawn is the sacred hour. We move from one world to the next accompanied by a dramatic lighting of this world.
Old Window in Finland by Helena Turpeinen, poster to View From My Window Facebook group
It wasn’t until my late 40s I was able to appreciate or regularly meet the dawn. If my sleep schedule ever regulates, I will miss these holy hours. I wake in the dark and cast off the stories my psyche told me while asleep and head for my beloved roll-top desk.
Dependent on the time of year, it could be some time before the dawning or just minutes.
But as I write the stories and sip coffee in silence, I glance over my shoulder through the atrium doors to look for the first arc of light.
It usually begins as a soft peachy pink rising with the fog over the hills and peeking through the trees. Dependent on weather and time of year, the color will sometimes intensify, sometimes wane, but always is a hearkening.
Here we are again. We made it to another day.
The silence is important.
Soon, the birds will start and the world will begin its hustle, but for a few minutes it’s just light and the creation of a new day, the creation of a new story to be told. Color on the silhouettes of the mountains bring me such contentment.
In twelve days, I will be on the shore of Lake Okeechobee in Florida. I’ve never been there before but I’ve seen sunset photos–another sacred part of the day. I am eager to nestle with my lover before leaving our bed to sit on the dock with my mug of coffee and journal. It won’t be silent – the lapping of the tide should, will, create its own sounds of peace. I am eager to see the Spanish moss hanging from the trees light up as the sun begins it ritual.
I’m sure I will photograph the scene in order to remember it, but I hope it imprints on my heart.
This is the sacred hour. Rejoice in the silence and witness the light. Turn to a new page and tell the story.
Writing Prompt: What’s Your TV ‘Comfort Food’? “Gilmore Girls”? “Friends”? “NCIS”? What show do you turn to when you are stressed, tired or just need a lift? Why?
I don’t watch television or stream shows or movies. I’m not visual and that sort of media doesn’t engage me for long. I might be tempted if there was a Silly Symphony or Looney Tunes channel I could get.
I did go through a spell where I watched Law & Order, usually SVU, for hours at a time. And I have no idea why. But it certainly wasn’t to give me a lift. It was an avoidance tactic. And it left me with disturbing images and cynical thoughts.
I’ve written elsewhere about giving up Law & Order as a New Year’s resolution one year so I won’t bore you with that story again, but I will confess that now and again – many months apart nows and agains mind you – I might turn on Law & Order while housecleaning. I don’t know why I do that either.
I do, however, have comfort music and comfort books.
When people I loved started dropping dead around me like raindrops in the April Appalachian Mountains, I developed what I call the Grief Quartet of CDs. It was actually 5 CDS as one was a double album. These were Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, The Essential Leonard Cohen, AJ Roach’s Dogwood Winter, and The Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions. These 5 CDs have been in my CD changer of the Big Stereo since several days after Doug died in June of 2013. I managed through trial and error and stupid luck to attach an Echo Dot to the Big Stereo and then network it so that when I fire up the Big Stereo every Echo in the house (and I have one in every room) plays the music.
I crank it up. I pour coffee or wine or champagne. And I wallow on my Beloved Sofa, and I sink intently into listening.
My grief at losing 4 dogs, a father, a best friend, a partner and two co-workers within eight years of one another has morphed into sweet memories of days gone by. I have beatified the dead – forgotten their flaws and celebrate what made me love them.
My time with this music is now enjoyable. Music, for the most part, and this music in particular is never just background music. I listen with intent. One CD after the other. Sometimes I will use the remote to repeat a cut. Sometimes two and three times until I have wrung every drop of comfort out of the lyrics and notes that I can.
I will listen to all five of the albums. Dependent on how I am feeling as I finish the last one, I may fire up Mozart’s Jupiter symphony. I love that piece. I’ve had the CD since CDs first came out. I first listened to it with a Walkman and cheap headphones.
I also have comfort books. There are a few particular books – The Secret Garden. Skinny Legs and All. Time in its Endless Flight. The Princess Bride — That I will flip through. Or my collection of children’s pop-up books.
But every book in my house is a comfort book. I enjoy my walls of books. I like looking at them. Knowing they are there. I inherited many of them from two of the folks who died and they are mostly as of yet still unread. I don’t read like I used to. I hope to get back to it, but writing takes up a lot of my reading time.
My books are legion. I say, and people think I’m joking, that I think the only thing holding up the barn are the bookcases. It’s not a joke. The bookcases reinforced walls and the roof. I have far too many and I can’t part with any of them and I don’t need to. I live alone. There is no one to fuss about the piles of books everywhere.
But mostly I have comfort coffee.
I love sitting in this room on a quiet snowy day listening to the furnace hum as the steam from a hot cup of coffee bathes my face. I hold the cup like it is the Holy Grail. Unlike music and books, I can do other things while I drink coffee. I can think. I can write. I can make a to-do list. I can read. I can listen to music.
But I particularly like silence with the first few cups of the day. My brain is a noisy place and I sometimes can lower the talk radio in my head to a low murmur if I sit with the coffee lot enough. Multiple cups of coffee.
I always come out the other side refreshed and ready to get on with things.
You can have the noise and chaos of a television show. I’ll just be over here, sipping this coffee, letting my mind quiet and my spirit nestle like a dove who has returned home to her nest.
W. Va. Fur and Root 