floating

last fall

Quite possibly, I am curious about all of it these days. I have felt, since the start of this year as though I am floating inside the liminal space of some vessel or canister, or maybe some diffuse mesh netting of a sort, something through which I am making a long passage. At this point, I can see neither the beginning, nor yet the end. I am in it. And it is wildly strange in this space because it is an absolute mix of the utterly familiar, all of the way into the center of my bones, and yet with this new unknown hue that comes along with the awareness of a final cycle. Which I guess is perhaps very fortunate. Many endings are unexpected, certainly unplanned, and this one is not that. I am staring it down. It is coming. Not yet here but most certainly near. And I am curious about it. I also dread it, absolutely, I do. But staying at least partially curious to how the dust will settle for all of us on the other side helps ease the grip of dread inside my chest. Life will go on, after all. And I am very very good at living. I am also good at joy and I think I am good enough at love to feel myself almost always at this stage soaked right through with it. I cannot help but worry though that this might be the very last year of the very best, most marvelous year of my whole life, and at only (I hope) halfway through, that feels a little bleak. Life on the other side of this long corridor very well may be phenomenal, and I will whoop and howl with all of the ecstasy of living it. But it will be the start of me on my own in a way that I haven’t known for the past 20 years and so incomplete from all the parts of my cellular material and that feels deeply undesirable when I stop to sit with it. I am trying to remember what there might be to teach within this big change. What can I impart to them now that things are transitioning into this next form? What can I model through my own new becoming? That has generally been a helpful path to walk for me as a mom. I read something the other day about raising kids to share the psychic load of the household tasks, beyond chore charts and tasking jobs. The author suggested that by teaching our children how to simply notice the state of their surroundings that they might be guided in anticipating what it is that needs to be done next, versus being constantly instructed toward that. They also discussed the ways in which the burden of that effort, of noticing and then assigning, generally fell inside the scope of a woman’s work and was thereby her burden to bear. The unseen load. I see this inside of myself and I have now taken to coaching them through the noticing and then the doing. The noticing, then the doing. So far, we all are horrible at it but I do think there is some key lurking inside of these efforts. It is not separate from curiosity I think. We come into this world noticing all of it. Every single movement of life, flutter of leaf, shift of light. We drink it all in. And then of course, our brain slowly learns to block out parts of the familiar in favor of the new, and inversely some of the new in favor of the comfortable. And so on and so on. But I wonder if this staying curious, awake, continuing to notice these shifting surroundings through this long passage is the way to truly craft a becoming that is wholly me. In which the marks of all of these years of living and loving as a cohesive group are etched across my body in ways that make me sing and not just sob. I think it is quite possible. Even if I cannot see it yet. Even if I will never really be ready and I am still quite happy to drag my feet with my darlings all here and near and flesh of my flesh in that similar fuzzy way that they have always been. I can be curious and take my time. No rush. Not there yet.