Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Isabel & I hopped on a late night plane and headed North to see our new little nephew Fox. I was in Chicago when I got the text with his newborn little eyes staring up at me from my phone. It was so good to be with family; running every day by the water, exploring the island with Isabel, making special cookies at night and eating lobster rolls. My brother took such good care of all of us, greeting us at midnight with a baby on his shoulder and a late dinner he prepared while his wife caught up on sleep. Also, somehow my sister-in-law has a sixpack two weeks after giving birth... ;) I can't express the endless ache my heart felt on this trip, but I'm so glad I could survive by the water.
Adventures in Portland
It’s like a tiny ocean breeze after being tossed onto
the shore from near drowning. Everything is still and there’s nothing left and
you don’t know if there's seawater in your lungs or if you made it to the
shores of an alternate after-life. It seemed the waves would never stop
crashing, and you don’t know how you got here or there or who
pushed you in the water or where did the boat go? but somehow you wake up in
the calm… it’s still. With hair matted, sand in your teeth, and a heart so
waterlogged you can’t lift your head but from somewhere
a slight wind touches your skin to rouse you. And you don’t know how long it
will last and if the gentleness will sustain after such rough torents. It seems both like yesterday and a completely
different life that you slipped into the storm and your
insides were ripped out, and there are still gashes and scars and fading
memories, but that soft airstream is like an unexpected kiss on wind-burned
cheeks. The way home seems far and you’re unsure if you even have a home and
the faces that once comprised love now feel like enemy territory, but somehow
even then with the memory of war-torn eyes you can see into the place that never lies, where the
blue encircles the black and the green specks golden in the sun peering behind the gazing windows that brought you pain, you see, is just broken glass. And even though the shards still sting, that waft of salty air, reminiscent of summer, works its’ way in,
settling the unexplained tempest.
And it’s tempting to go back in the water and
pound the waves, lifting fists at the gales that wrestled you here but that
draft keeps caressing those burned up wounds and inciting surrender to the coastline. And it doesn't make sense and it isn't fair and there's so much that seems ruined but somehow the water did not overcome you, and someway you are still breathing; and even though the gasp was sucked out, this faint wind has come along, this soft invisible affection, this subtle enrobing in the midst of the wreckage is a redolent whisper that you will, one day, set sail again.
grace.
Today it feels like Autumn. Yesterday’s hot air swept down
to the Florida Keys in the night and North Carolina woke up with the visitation
of September breeze. I still heard crickets this morning, which only made me
think of distant summertime. I can barely remember sticky flip-flops and
sandcastles as this summer felt like the ultimate winter inside my sweating
body. Normally, the hint of Fall brings the idea of sentimental romance, trips
to New York, and the beginning of new things or the snuggle of beautiful, worn
things. But for me, as the season nudges me to rummage through my clothes and
search for socks & scarves, my anticipation for Christmas, feels barren. The
disappointments of my real life are so overwhelming that the idea of hoping for
a surprise at the end of this year feels more like trick or treat.
Most of my childhood memories are in the Fall; my dad making us spend Saturdays raking; manual child labor that turned into itchy paper-mountain jumps, messing up our hard work. I used to climb trees and wrap my legs around the trunk, leaning on the branches to catch glimpses of the sun sending fiery Morse code in between its' golden hands. I think that’s when the artist in me began, basking in the pigments of nature as it changed so quickly. And as I recall those moments, it seems nature is the only thing left to bring me courage to hope again.
As everything I thought my life would look like has changed,
and changed again and again it’s beginning to feel like there is no personal
formula to believing anymore. There is so much unknown. As time keeps
unraveling, the more mysterious the direction has become. It feels as if I am
a great explorer who believed in an adventurous far-off land and now I’m standing on the
edge of it only to find savage forests. I have no compass or grid to find my
way through, all I can do is put my galoshes on and forage with no assurance I’ll
make it.
So I slide my legs into my battered boots, one
foot at a time, and I wrap my body for the season. I pack light, throw my girl
on my back, and walk.
I don’t know what Thanksgiving or Christmas will look like.
I don’t know if my business will grow or die. I don’t know if I will feel the
warmth of happiness in my heart again. But my hope is that God might have had a divine plan mapped in
weather patterns after all. That even though we don’t know so much, we do know: the leaves will turn orange and gold, the trees will become bare and the air cold, there
will be magnolias and green... and before you know it, we’ll all be seaside.
fingers crossed
fingers crossed
Weather Patterns



This weather (among other things) has been terrible for my sense of adventure. Sometimes it's so hard to get out of the house and explore. And after this trip- my daughter's not feeling well. But yesterday my friend Jessie asked if me and little Bel wanted to go see some freshly born baby lambs... and they were precious. And it was so worth venturing in the cold.
I love farm life, and sometimes I kind of crave the simplicity of it. It's got me thinking about more possible adventures to come... (Spring Hurry!)
baby lambs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)


























































Social Icons