LAST DAY

Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

The last day of April. The last day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I have to show up to wrap up though I don’t know where or how to begin. I am feeling the overwhelm of too many loose threads. My mind is far from being a clean slate, a blank canvas upon which I can paint/write the life I want. Instead it is a muddy eddy of scattered thoughts and memories. What are/were my goals, my wants and loves? They are not necessaily the same things.

I’m always eager and engaged at the beginning of any new endeavor. I feel focused and pumped. However, it doesn’t take long before my burst of enthusiasm develops a slow leak. I lose sight of the whole enchilada. I tread water, don’t show up, and/or write the same damn thing day in and day out. Sometimes I pride myself in just showing up/trying. I guess you can say I am beating myself up. That’s not it though. I’m giving myself a pep talk.

April and any given month is a hard month. And so are any given day. If I am being repetitive, so is life. There is a tediousness to almost everything. I/everyone have to work through that part. No one is exempt. How do you work through that? I heave and sigh alot. I make a cup of tea. Lately I had to change up on my cup size and kind of tea. I was getting too much caffeine. My heart was skipping a little too much and my lymph nodes swelling up. The change has been good but I still get cravings of my endless cup of Orange Pekoe tea. Listening to Caroline Myss on the Addict Archtype and Tara Brach on Letting Go helped alot. Writing about the tedium opens up the way out of it, too.

I’m not as morose as I sound. Really, I am not. It’s my way of working through hard spots and hard times. I’m not protesting too much. A friend reading my posts once offered me help and sanctuary because she thought I needed help. It was such a lovely and generous gesture. It’s a beautiful memory I have of her. Both she and her father were such a help to us when we first came to Canada. She walked me to school every morning and took me to Sunday school till I outgrew the need. I hope she still keeps an eye on me from Heaven.

WILD GEESE

April 2. It’s a grey snow falling on the cedars kind of a day. Not one speck of sun. The temperature was still in the minuses this morning. We thought we would go for one last ski. What a foolish decision! It wasn’t full of joy. I caught myself thinking ‘how fucking stupid is this!’ several times as I picked/slid/skid carefully and gingerly along the miserably bumpy, icy, gutted tracks. I felt somewhat like Tiny Tim as he tiptoed through the tulips. As I uttered my last expletive a flock of geese flew overhead. I couldn’t help but think of Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese. Two of the birds came down to perform a dance for me.

It changed my thoughts completely. I was very happy to be out on that f’g! track. It was so worth it. I wasn’t being good. It wasn’t as bad as if I was walking on my knees. It felt magical being out there with these wild creatures, the snow, the bare trees and the grey sky. I felt part of it all.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I KNEW IT WAS MY LAST DAY THERE

P1040763

The snow on the ground this morning made me think of my first time to Ghana, land of palm trees and warm beaches, being close to the equator.

Here I am, with my own chief, sitting on the balcony of our chalet, facing the ocean, creating my own photo memory.  I knew it was my last day there.

Pictures flashed through my mind – the woman in her black Benz on the red clay road, the son who thanked me and the balloon-filled sky as Nana drove towards the airport.

I remembered I was a woman of grace.  I am still.