Channels

Yesterday my teacher pointed out the difference between having a list of things to do and inhabiting a place where your tasks are part of a meaningful living process. For a short time I left the home I've made to spend time in the home made by my parents, left my mom/spouse list behind for the daughter one, but I almost didn't recognize it. Then I came back and once again felt myself struggling to locate myself in my life.

After 10 days in the hospital and recovering from an infection and emergency surgery my 79 year old father was hard to recognize too. He is skirting the edges, not taking life for granted. He talked about different things, and in a different way. He talked more about people and relationships, and with more emotion than I've ever seen him show. He thanked me for coming to be with him and my mom. Missing home made me want to leave, but seeing this dramatic change demanded for me to stay and witness. I felt that one other intense time, when I had to hold on to a tiny being and then choose when to let go because it would be forever. Being a parent has forever changed the way I am a daughter.

Life does not feel solid and yet it feels so heavy at times. Words are light. There is so much in them, and in a body and mind. Books full of words are available to me. Stores full of clothing, furniture, ugly and beautiful things. Take take take then throw away. Pull in muscles with or without breathing. Travel with or without enjoying. Stay at home with or without hiding. Hide with or without caring. Care with or without voting. Leave with or without knowing you can return.

The difference appeared in the threads created in the grain of the wood between the knots in the yoga studio ceiling. Where I once saw smiles and then patience (described here), now I see channels. Some ways narrow, widen, narrow, go through. Some are closed off and become islands, gathering places where the density of growth allowed for a branch to shoot off in a new direction. We can make our patterns in the world: breathing with love, moving with acceptance, seeing with appreciation, locating with gratitude. It feels good to find this again, even though I am not beyond questioning it yet.

Remarkably clear to the horizon

No, I'm not in Hawaii any more. I'm trying to hang on to the feeling though. Sorting the mail, settling back into school and volunteering routines, yoga (thank goodness for yoga), the simple act of getting food into the house and onto the table has filled each day up completely, and for the past two weeks I wonder at ever having had any time to sit, think, and write about thoughts.

I do think it was easier to come back from such a supremely relaxing time away because of the routine of yoga. The way I love being in my yoga community is at least equal to one wild and dangerous memory of a slowly untwisting deliciously yellow hibiscus flower. Waking up, moving through the preparations of school lunch-making and breakfast and getting the kids to school, and then miraculously, compellingly, finding myself on my mat in Jen's studio is a recipe for a day riding with the hum of contentment.

Really, I am amazed I get to say that when I think of the disputes I had with myself over the worth of moving from bed a year ago. This is a vivid time for me, all the more intensely fertile after a fallow, barren period. As Jen says, "recover, uncover, discover something new about yourself. Be in your own good company."

So I take time for myself in spite of the struggles of the world, I attend to self care in the ways that I can, along with all the lucky and not so lucky women of the world, remembering when I felt ragged and worn, and then I allow myself to remember walking through a warm green palm tunnel as material for the glue with which I hold my family together.

I don't know what will come of it all. Sometimes it seems I could make a difference, that I'm gathering myself for something momentous. Sometimes just a glimpse of building a safe, peaceful corner of existence seems important, and sometimes the world is too big to bring into focus and there is simply the enjoyment of the textures of my life, my daughter's terrycloth hoodie moving away through the lushness, my son's voice saying "mom, I think I'm finally relaxed enough to go back to school."

Here we are once again dispersing to the four corners every morning and it's only going to ramp up from right here through the holidays. I am so glad we had a chance to be together and rest.