other people's gardens

In my "note from the universe" today, there was a sweet message that basically distills down to this: why spend your time wishing for and wanting what other people have when you can discover and tend what you have that is truly yours.

I drove into work today noticing that the snow was, rather suddenly, mostly gone after yesterday's crazy warm weather and a night of warm wind. The horses were out waiting for hay, all wooly from the long winter. Right now everything seems to be shades of brown, but when you take a closer look, all of a sudden you notice the rice paper leaves of the beech trees, or the russet branches in the apple orchard, the buds on the maples are rosy too, and the birch catkins are the palest cream. Willows are downright yellow, and in my garden? A riot of purple crocuses that look like the tiniest iris. And chives! Green fingers pushing up through the bad-mannered neighbor that is the creeping thyme.

So while there is mud and hibernating grass and heaps of fallen branches, sticks, twigs, acorns, oakleaves, and gravel covered stubborn heaps of snow.... there is color too. At 8 tonight the sky was light enough to see the outlines of the trees.

It has been a really horribly tough few weeks, but in between the crushing sadness, I have moments of something that feels like hope, and I want so badly to string those together to fortify my heart.

The house is not on the market yet, but it will be. I am up to my neck in paperwork, and if I never have to do another hardship letter in my whole life, that will not be too soon. I cannot tell you how awful that was. But

it was.

past tense. It is done.

Requests came today for more information, more things to fill out, more things to find.

It will get done, and I know it will not be a forever project.

There's a gift in all of this: losing the house means losing the reason I need to get a JOB, the all caps job that means long hours and bigger pay-- not that I was finding those options anyway with my weird niche expertise, my otherwise generalist nature, and my too-long-at-my-old-company. But now I am free to look at work differently, to look for something I want to do and can do well. Something or things I would enjoy. I am looking into consulting, into writing, into coaching, into...... who knows? Once the house moves on to its next owner, one who will love it for the obscene bargain it will be, I can move on too.

***

Della is 5 months old, laughter, light, babble, DROOL, wiggling arms and legs, pure and total delight. She is smart and strong and funny. She looks at me, into me, beyond me... she grabs and holds and drops things rather randomly. She loves things that rumple and crinkle, loves the taste of banana and oatmeal from my fingertips, she laughs out loud at her dad's funny faces, and her face lights up when she sees him. She is tender one moment, inadvertently maybe, a hand on my cheek, and my heart melts. Then she bites down hard during nursing, iron gums, and pulls back, and I swear and she cries and I feel horrid. She no longer cries when we sneeze, but looks alarmed when we laugh loudly. She talks and talks and talks which I love.

Me, I am under renovation. Half my hair fell out in clumps and is still coming out in wads that are alarming. I cannot tell you how shitty that is. I am having to have faith it will grow back. I am back in my old pants but lord, not my old shape. That's ok though, I figured the pants would never fit again, so it is like having a new pair. I am trying to do yoga each non work day. But it is more for strength than calm these days. Plank while wearing baby in bjorn. Strength under squish. Skin on face is wrecked from stress I bet, and I find I am healing slowly. I am sick again with razor throat then gloopy snot. I think though that this is part of some sort of old-life sloughing. As I move through this, toward whatever is next, I hope that there will be less sleepless obsessing, more time outside, more time breathing, more time creating again (not on the phone with banks please). I look forward to the garden, which is both my garden and someone else's. I will not plant new things here, but I will tend. And I will plant a container I think to put near the door, to leave for the next folks, or to bring with us if I choose, when we go.

As someone so wisely said a few posts back, it is impossible to hold on and let go at the same time, but I find myself trying to and rediscovering over and over that I have to let go.