Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~Rumi

The place where you are right now
God circled on a map for you
wherever your eyes and arms and heart can move
Against the earth and the sky,
the beloved has bowed there-
The beloved has bowed there knowing
You were coming…
~Hafiz

After work tonight I felt like when I walked out of my building into my freedom, there was a sunset painted just for me. From the look of the other people going to and fro on campus, I was the only one who could see what was lighting up the evening sky to welcome the fall of darkness.

It was as if someone shred pink and purple iridescent ribbon slices across the sky with razor blades. They were only there for the briefest of moments, and I got to take hold of it, as if it was a welcome sign that this was what the whole day was leading up to. All the scurrying to get the kids ready for school in the morning, for me driving to work in the super cold weather and through the snow driving, through the working all day inside an office where I don’t know if I’m meant to be…

all of that…
all of that…
was what lead up to this moment of a sunset that seemed to be painted just for me.

and the reality came to me that I may not have noticed it if all the day hadn’t have happened as it did.

working eight ours, to walk out of the building into my freedom…
I stepped into a painting where colorful ribbons sliced across the sky for the smallest of moments, iridescence, highlighting the end of my day, and opening the door for the rest of the evening.

I was sitting at the table tonight with my family and we were laughing and smiling so huge that it felt like heaven opened up and swallowed us into it’s embrace. I immediately felt my eyes fill with tears and my throat tighten as it dawned on me the significance of this moment and the impact that it was making on my heart. Thankfulness for my husband, his smile, his heart. Thankfulness for my kids, their laugh, their unique sense of humor. And thankfulness for my place in this family, my role of mom, wife, and friend… the thankfulness overwhelmed me to the core. The truth that this moment would fade away all to soon was not lost on me, for even now reflecting on it and trying to find words to tell of it, seem to diminish its heart affect. I am so deeply thankful and so deeply grateful, that mere words cannot express…. but if I were to try to describe it… if I could pull the words together into some order, it would be:

Love love love came swirling around me today like a soft whisper wind, and joy laughed at my cheeks and echoed in my ears that my spirit had to try to grasp the tail of this helium balloon moment that was floating and dancing away and taking my heart up with it into it’s fruition in a chorus of a song in loud Braille with a melody full of effortless love that was imprinting itself inside my heart.

Today and yesterday I’ve been able to be a stay at home mom, literally. Adair hasn’t felt well enough to go to school, she’s tired and has some aches, and she’s congested, but most of all, she’s just tired. I’ve been reading up on the H1N1 and wondering if she has that or some other type of random virus. Interesting reading it was though, let me tell you. I learned there is a class of individuals that is known by the community of immunologists as the “superspreaders” and surprise surprise, school aged children are in that group, along with their well meaning parents or guardians. Superspreaders, sounds generous doesn’t it? Not so much if it’s talking about viruses. Another term I learned was about your “herd immunity”, which is where if the elementary school does a school-wide vaccination for all the children, then we as adults even if we haven’t been immunized would receive benefit because of us residing in the same herd as those who did get the vaccination. Interesting isn’t it? Another new thing I learned is that there is a whole subset of people who in their spare time are “flu trackers” and they study the immunology, and waves of illness. Isn’t that interesting? Did you know that the illnesses come in waves? H1N1 has. Wave 1 occurred early last spring, and we are now joyfully entering Wave 2. Fun! I hope I don’t catch the wave, I’m really not that much of a surfer.

Anyway, today there was snow, and my little girl is resting. I’m on the computer logging the moment into record so that we all know it occurred. Tuesday. Girl. Sick. Snow. Home. Love. It’s all there for you, just not necessarily in that order.

I’m home… where I feel like I was meant to be. Tomorrow though, I’ll find the courage to return to work, knowing at least that it means if I do, that my little girl feels all better.

What to do with the cacophony of emotions that come about when someone you love is nearing the end of their life? It doesn’t seem to matter to my heart that this person I love has had a long and wonderfully rich life, filled to the brim with experiences, of which I was able to share some of. It doesn’t matter that this person I love lives hundreds of miles away and the last time I saw them was three or four years ago. The doesn’t matters don’t matter, my heart feels raw and the inner depths of me feel like it’s going to implode on itself with the rest of me to follow into the smallest black hole abyss on the inside that I didn’t realize had the power to suck me under and in.

Maybe the impending death of a life so richly lived is a reminder to the lack of permanence we all have. Or it is a window to unresolved grief for others that I have lost, or those I am afraid to lose in the future.

It is bittersweet and I navigate a path and tension between one part of me that celebrates a life well lived and another part mourns what this significant loss means to me and all those involved.

I know I will go on. I know all others involved will go on. I know I am better for having loved this person. I know that a legacy has been set into motion that will always live even when they are no longer here.

But right now, before this person dies, I want to voice that I’m going to miss them, and dare say I already do. I want to say I’m sorry their end is near and will come. I want to say that I am with them even though I’m hundreds of miles away. I want to say thank you for all that you have poured into my life. I want to say that I recognize that you encouraged and supported me, and that I am forever grateful for it. I want to say so much more but I can’t because I’m imploding, and this imploding hurts.

I don’t want comments…
I don’t want “I understands”…
I don’t want platitudes…
I don’t want you to tell me later that you read this post…

I’m putting this here for me…

I’m scribbling this out to describe what I’m wrestling with…

I just want to write this moment out for my mind, my peace, my presence and my heart….

as if it will help the implosion go somewhere instead of the inner inside and away with a force that could sweep the rest of me with it.

with the rain, those poor little worms have no choice but to get out of that saturated soil and make a run for it… little do they know, the birds are singing “Yay its raining, its pouring, the worms are soon to cover the flooring…” as they lick their beaks.

++clearing out some posts that were sitting in my draft box.

I read a quote on the blog of another that I’ve been thinking about… the quote comes from flylady.net (who I have much to learn from) and it says:

“Keep in mind, you are not behind: you are just getting started. I don’t want you to try to catch up, I just want you to jump in where you are.”

That really covers a bunch of things doesn’t it?  Pretty much every thing in my life.   There are things I wish I did more of… like stitch more, clean more, and even write more, even if it is just to document my journey along this meandering path of motherhood and wife-hood, of life in all its array.  So, I guess that’s what I’m doing here, while at the same time I’m listening to my washing machine spin upstairs, and while I’m smelling the zucchini bread bake in the oven… it really has been a productive day, including things such as a nap, laundry, changing Adair and Alec’s sheets…. all the things that may seem mundane, but really, they gave me some sanity today.

I’m 38.  I have more than 38 lbs. to lose, I have less than $38 in my bank account, and I have a list of 38 other things I should be doing right now.  But, I’m not behind, in fact, I’m just getting started, and I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

Where is that exactly?

I’m not really sure…

somewhere between here and there…

but in the middle of now.

I’m not behind, I’m just getting started, I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

There is something soothing about repeating that… it’s comforting. It removes pressure from outside forces, and it brings me to now… to today… to what I have control of… which is this minute and where I choose to go from here. I don’t really know if I even have to have a destination? I think it’s all about the jumping in and allowing the moment to settle me, and removes the sense that I’m behind before I ever think if getting started.

I’m not behind, I’m just getting started, I don’t have to catch up, I just need to jump in where I am.

Today I was describing a part of my day to my daughter, specifically about the “Blood Battle” that is going on between our school and a rival.  Not blood per say as in fighting each other to a bloody pulp, but more in the shape of a blood drive with the American Red Cross at the center.  So, knowing that my daughter is a sponge for all things scientific and cool, I shared my experience of how I donated blood.  I told her about how I learned of a new way to do donate blood besides just the traditional way where donors give whole blood (consisting of red cells, plasma and platelets).  I’d never heard of the a new automated process that I got to do called “double red cell donation,” where donors like myself can give just the red cells, and not just my red cells, but two units of red cells, which is the component of blood that is in the greatest demand!  How cool is that!?  So, being that this was so awesome, and that I got a great t-shirt for this experience, I described to her this fantastic process and how it makes my heart feel comfort knowing that something from within me can be shared, and shared with someone in need, and even help to heal!

Imagine my heart stop as I neared the end of my description and saw my daughter’s eyes enlarge and fill quickly with tears as she searched with her hand for the arm of the couch where she was sitting, as if she had to steady herself from this barrage of too much information!  My immediate thought, Oh no… what have I done?! Too late to wonder that now, it was obvious that I had crossed a border of assuming she was going to think the science part of it was cool.  She… in. no. way. shape. or. form. thought. that. AT. ALL!!!  I, Mrs. O-positive-blood-donor-super-mommy had missed the mark, big time.

All my daughter thought was apparently something so big, that she couldn’t verbalize it. After I stopped talking and tried to back peddle to fix where ever it was that I went wrong, and to get her to communicate what she was feeling other than the visible panic, all she said was that she felt like she had something rise from inside her stomach, leaving itself “sitting heavy on her chest,” and that something was “so hard inside, something as hard as an eraser,” and that it felt like “a net was grabbing it and cinching it tight” into her chest and that it “couldn’t move.”

As a parent, here I was trying to describe this cool thing (to me alone obviously!), and I somehow assumed that because she is a bookworm, and loves technology and science, and that she told me the other day, without a hint of worry or concern in her voice that her fourth grade teacher fed the class boa constrictor snake a white mouse, and the snake constricted it, suffocated it, then ate the mouse tail first.  She seemed fine telling me that, saying it as if she was telling me that the sky was blue or that the grass was green.  Yet, somehow from all that, and other stuff in between, I missed that she just wasn’t ready to hear about the b word.

The more we talked about it, I came to learn of her fears, and that it’s not just the word blood, or the description of blood that makes her chest feel heavy and tight causing alarm which demands tears, it extends to thought of what germs do to the inside of you – they can kill you, or what snake venom can do inside your body – like paralyze you, and what cancer cells divide and how they can’t be stopped.  She went on and on crying and mumbling things I couldn’t even understand through her sobbing.  What caught me most was that I had witnessed her eyes open the widest I have ever seen them, and I saw the torrent of sobs she unleashed, which was unlike anything that had come out of her before.  It all underscored a fear that had been lurking under her surface waiting for this moment, and my saying the trigger word!  I opened my big mouth, and brought on the panic!  Me!  Talking about the cool centrifuge that spun my blood to make it into two parts, bla, bla, bla…. it created a vortex of uncontrolled chaos within my daughter.

So strange in looking at it from an afternoon’s distance that something on one side, so life giving – donating blood to someone who could die if they don’t get it, while on the other side, sharing it with my daughter who I had to talk down off a ledge of fear for about an hour because it was too much information, which ignited all the other things that were connected to it.

I sat with her in my arms trying to comfort her and listen to her heart and fear, and I asked many questions to try to understand better her inner turmoil.  And, to be brutally honest, I find it sad knowing that I still gave one cliché or churchy response to her fear, in saying the verse “Perfect love casts out fear.”  Really now, what does that mean to young girl in this situation mama?!  *sigh, note to self:  next time just shut up and listen*  Anyway, in the end, her near hyperventilating stopped and she settled and we talked about ways that she could express what is building up within her that said she doesn’t know how to talk about.  We talked about how she could use her artistic gift to illustrate her concerns or to journal out words that provoke thoughts in her so that they don’t threaten to overwhelm her.

Sometimes I really want to write something.  Its as if there is a need to just put words together in a sentence, and then put a sentence after that.  But the paralyzing thought always comes first “what should I write about?” and that usually leaves me grasping at straws for some kind of topic, which never seems to reveal itself.  Just like this, I’m grasping at straws and spelling out this process.

I think from time to time that I would like to write something, like an article for the paper, maybe I could be one of those cute regular columnist, or maybe I could write a book… and be a new JK Rawling.  But, truth be told, I just don’t know how to get from here to those places.

Perhaps you just have to write, even if you don’t have anything at all to say.  Just write for the sake of writing, to stay in practice if you will, so that when you do have something you really have to say, you can say it, spell it, write it, breath life into it.

Perhaps I should practice more… but I have a problem with that damn backspace key erasing whatever I put down, when I do put it down… that key and that little pinkie finger that reaches up to push it have a life of their own and act as a censor because in all truthfulness, what I have to say sometimes is rather insignificant.  I guess there is a point that even if its insignificant, it needs to be said.

It’s been a busy summer, with working full time and all… I feel like I’m missing out on so much with my kids, but then again… I notice that when I’m home, they are off and away doing their own thing… their independence is growing, which is a good thing in the long run, but in this moment of reflection it’s bittersweet.

So much growing I have yet to do… so much perspective I have yet to gain… all in time I know… all in time. Funny how when I feel like I’ve just been granted insight into something, I get a bigger glimpse that shows me I have so much of a vast expanse yet to travel…

all in good time I’m reassured, all in good time.