February was a month of madness, a wounding time I am nudging behind me with this big wet stretch of March pouring in and storming down. With a few weeks of distance, I can now distill those 28 days into 28 words, better than fleshing them out into skin and bone and watching them lurk around again: skunk deaths and skunk nightmares, biopsy for me, strep for her, the uprooting of things and people and friendships, a sad sort of alienation, and too many medical bills. And then February moved on.
I think I finally broke through it when I turned to a friend and said, "I am not ok."
Since then I have wrapped myself in work and in tea parties and in the lovely little musings of my daughter who starts and ends each day earnestly singing to herself in the mirror. To look out into the world through her loving and trusting eyes is my secret weapon when morning bears heavily down. And sometimes, in cavernous moments still echo-y from sleep, I see myself as she does and I breathe. And begin my day.
This month, with this latest batch of oddities disappearing behind me, I am grateful for the rain and the wind and the hail that stings my face. And for the great combustion of storm-blackened clouds and the adrenaline sheeting down in slick slivers from the sky. I am alive, the weather reminds me. I am here.
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
(Hafiz)
I read recently that the onset of adulthood brings with it the unfurling of a permanent sort of ambiguity. In my mind, this indefiniteness is a thickening layer of maturity spread grout-like between the tiles of life's untouching squares, binding them together while keeping them apart. It plagues me now, this sensation that I can't find space within myself to store these bits of my past for good, airtight and out of sight. Have I run out of room already? I have learned not to sweat the small stuff, but the big stuff gleams from my skin, obvious and loud. There is no settling into this growing and raucous uncertainty, it seems, when life folds into itself.
I wonder why I choose to feel so responsible, then, positioning myself directly on one side of this indivisible expanse and leaving the other side blank and clean. Why am I so quick to forgive my favorite friends their mishaps and my sweetpea her tiny yet pitched indiscretions, but not myself these bumbling decisions year in and year out? I wonder when I will be free of this when it is already so free of me. And there, in that question, lies the burden of my own responsibility staring quite frankly back.
And yet, life goes on, no matter what I pause to consider or improve. In an instant, March will be April and April will be May and May will deliver us into summer. Tomorrow there will be work to do, and I will feel relieved for it. Adela will awaken with her feisty fire stoked and burning and I will fasten my mood to her spirit. I will cut strawberries for her lunch and pour cheerios into a bowl. I will search my calendar for breaks in the day and plan my ride around lunch. I will drive us up the hill; she will sing and I will smile and sip my tea. I will work, shift into reverse as the day reaches its tipping point, and do it all again.
If I am glad for anything -- and I am glad for a lot -- it is the simple, stunning wonder of a day lived in the best way I know how to live it. I may not know my heart from my mind or from my soul, and I may spend too much time chasing away my circular sadness, but I know how to love. And that is something I do marvelously well, in spite of it all, day after day.
~ Katie
Title quote from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz, 1999
