coming back home

It was so dark and foggy this morning, nearly monochromatic until 7 when the yellow of the leaves started to peek through. it is hard to imagine that vibrancy dulled in any way now that it is midday and bright with clouds flying by overhead south to north.
The long stillness felt like a held breath, and there is relief in the motion, of leaves falling, of clouds flying. And there is a relief too in the view opening up, the fog gone, a sense of distance renewed.

I traveled last week for business, and am just now getting my feet under me. I was only west-coast time lagged, but felt like I was on mars. Away away. Way away. Being away from Della felt horrid. Not just because we have not yet weaned (although that was its own kind of suckitude), but because I am used to being within a car drive, an arm's reach, an hour.

So I am back and reconnecting every which way. Catching up to language that shifted in my absence, making that absence feel more acute. Catching up to my own selves, also feeling a bit shifted in flight. So yes, back home.  Grateful. Steeped in tea and toast and wool socks.

Journeys: buddha and ammo boxes

Driving up route 145 north out of colebrook, you'd pass Dostie's furniture on the right.  A long low building sided in vertical boards of a medium blue. Tune up shops, trailers and homes fall away quickly as the road heads uphill faster than you can downshift. 

The drive takes you up one of the most beautiful winding drives in New Hampshire, up and up and up. Up through Stewartstown to Clarksville toward Pittsburg.

For the past half hour, before I lost signal, I'd been listening to NPR, coming in tiny aggravating bits, a TED show on storytelling. I hear enough that affirms what I know, how stories inform us, connect us, express our humanness... and even though the sporadic signal is long since gone, an npr-ish narrator remains.

Driving up route 145 out of colebrook...

but it is me,

I am driving,

and I am driving to the cemetery.

This story was supposed to begin like this:

3 ammo boxes, a buddha and some bells.

An empty bag from Dunkin Donuts.

An empty car seat.

A baggie of stale cheerios.

A small painting of a winter sky.

A well-past prime brown eyed susan.

I am in good company I guess, confused company. Bit and pieces that express my life in this instant. This journey today has been a long one, and it has been a long one, and it will be a long one. I realized a while back that grief is a long term partner. It is patient enough to wait out any amount of denial and diversion. It comes up, coughs politely into its hand, just often enough to not forget. Occasionally it moves a doorway so you slam into a wall that was not there the day before, but that, these many years later, just happens sometimes.

I am here with two boxes of Jeff's things. Things I could not throw away but cannot keep. Things that were personal, intimate. Things that were his. I've added some symbolic things too, a fountain pen, an abacus, 3 fly fishing flies (a wooly bugger, blue winged olive and a royal wulff). I've added a knot of keys from an old truck. 3 stones. And a note I wrote with a very shaky hand the night before.

The things are in two ammo boxes, a momentary act of brilliance on my part, waterproof,  compact, and speaking directly to Jeff's love of old military equipment, and utilitarian design. He used to have one in his truck for change and the notebook where he fastidiously recorded every gallon of gas purchased, every oil change, every mile driven.

The third box came with my ebay purchase, and I will give it to Peter, the Sexton, whose history in the armed forces has just been revealed to me.

The buddha is in place of a marker I cannot afford.

And the bells, I am not sure what they are for. Movement maybe, movement. Change. 

And the flower, if all goes well, will come up again and again and again, spreading its pot bound roots deep into the nearly impenetrable soil that has been loosened, in this moment, by 2 and a half hours of Peter's patient digging.

Peter is a farmer and an angel. He has dug a million holes. Fence posts and grave markers. The hole where we stand is just one of those million, but the angel in him says that this is the only one that matters, the only one that matters this way, today.

We put the boxes in the bottom and slowly fill the hole with handfuls of soil and rocks while we fill the air with conversation that stretches nearly as far as the sky.

We talk of town politics and god and vietnam, of guns and hospitals, of his wife, and love, and hope.

We talk of things we agree on and things about which we disagree, but I can see how he sees it, if I were standing in his shoes.

He raises heritage chickens and I am raising a spirited child, and his kids are long grown.

We place the buddha and the plant. He places the carefully cut sod.  I arrange rocks to hold the bells which do not meet with my hopes for either clear ringing movement or of heavy-bottomed groundedness. Oh well. There are a million things, I know, that are better in theory than in practice.

And then, my nose fully burned, and my hair blown wild by a wind that has kept up with our conversation, we make our way back up the hill. He finds and hands me a turkey feather. We talk about skunks and the divots they've left everywhere in the grass.

With a hug, we part, and I walk to my car, stinking of the stale beer I spilled from a can I picked up as trash when I first arrived...my eyes seeking sign of cousins of the bees that flew in fast, as soon as my doors opened, and would not get out until ignored fully, with all the doors open, while I moved boxes and buddha and bells to the site.

It has been an hour and a half. And it has been much longer than that. And I am still 4 hours from home.

The light has changed, and now the hillsides show more glorious color-- the air has cleared maybe, and the wind is no longer tossing every leaf upside down.

145 is more beautiful north to south and I creep along, happy that no one is behind me, as I look out over acres of mountain sides, flush with fall color, and the black spears of some sort of evergreen.

I drive home through rain in franconia, hard enough to look like dark coming on.

The down and down and toward home.

Just as it is truly dark, I get out of the car to throw out my donut bag,  and my legs are wobbly from the journey.

It feels like so much longer than  a day.

I look up at the windows of our apartment, the twinkle lights strung perfectly imperfectly across the glass. It is like coming back from the moon, I imagine, welcoming and strange. And I am both lighter and heavier than I was when I left.

Della at 2.75 going on 14

My wee teenager.

We are in the thick of it, rolling eyes, crossed arms, humphing. The impatience and impertinence.  

It would be more funny if I were less tired, more capable. Hey, I do realize this: this is about doing the best you can. Sometimes that is pretty good, sometimes it isn't, it's awkward and I spend my day uglyfaced, short tempered and unfun. But sometimes, sometimes it is pure magic.

She is immense, people, truly. Immensely herself. All of this will serve her well later in life.

She is immense, and she is encouraging me to become more than I ever imagined.

What an awkward gift that is.

No, I say, No. No a million ways, a million times.

I disappoint. I just do. It's built in. If you told me that I would do this, over and over, knowingly, I would have told you you were crazy, it is * SO UNKATE*.

But here I am.

And however unfun the moments, 

however awkward some of the gifts,

however tired my tired ass truly is (it is no longer dragging, dragging indicates motion, and motion indicates energy)

however much I fantasize about sleep or resilience or reserve or calmness in the face of it all

however much I fantasize about whatever it was I fantasized about when I still had braincells

this

this is so much MORE.

pure magic, with a side of snark.

not at all our ordinary

Della is asleep.
not on me or next to me
or on anyone.
she's alone in the other room.
Granted, she is on my bed, the bed I will sleep in...
and worn out from a day of copious snot and some farm animals and a trip to target and a walk downtown

but we don't do this.
this is not at all our ordinary
it is the oddest thing ever to have her be asleep in there and have me awake in here

she fell asleep at 6 and will wake, starved and imperious, somewhere between now and 3am.

but here we are.
in separate rooms.

I've checked her a few times, she is now 90 degrees away from her starting position.
and
well.
wow.
I'm going to go have some dinner.
and
um
maybe read a book?
I don't have the faintest idea what to do which is insane and just goes to show just how far down the rabbit hole I've fallen

august anniversary

10 years ago and the memory is both sharp and muddled

I have a story my self tells myself. the moon was near full, but the day was rainy

and it was years before I was ok on sundays or mondays or on nights with a big moon. I could not even look at it.

today is saturday, and it is not rainy, and the moon is thin and waxing. my life’s a million leagues away from that life, but I am still the same kate. this is still the same heart.

I sometimes talk about my “past lives”, seasons from this lifetime that feel nearly separate, like chapters. But the truth is, this is my mosaic. This is my tangle. This is my weft and weave. There is no metaphor that captures the dimensions of this kind of human evolution, the one that is in each one of us, in heartbreak and success, in growing up and into and out of and beyond. There are things that keep us grounded, but there is the urge to keep seeking; the feelings of nesting and those of setting out. Achievement and beginners mind. All that we know informing us, humbling us, with all that we don’t yet know and all that is unknowable.

the thing about grief, for me, is that the loss is still a loss. It did not happen today. but today it is still lost. and there is all this space for whatiffing. all this space for the wild thicket of guilt and horror, of astonishment, of disbelief.

so yes, I mark this day with a heavy heart. no matter that my life is filled with wonderful things. no matter that my heart is filled with love. i hold both, the full and the empty.

there is an ancient japanese art of mending, Kintsugi, that believes that mending can be as beautiful (if not more so) than the original vessel.

today, i hold this image cupped in my hands.

broken, yes, but mended and mending with a thousand golden seams.

what we want, what we are wanting

Hi Folks! I have a guest post up at Seek Your Course!
I'd love it if you'd pop over and check it out. It is an empowering meditation about wanting.
It is always a bit surreal to see my words packaged in such a polished fashion, but I also have to confess a bunch of sheepish pride.

falling, saving myself, great fits and starts

once I wrote that flying is just falling and saving yourself over and over again, and I thought i was pretty clever but, of course, a bazillion other clever people have seen it the same way

so here I am
falling, saving myself, falling, saving myself.

I realized that I was stressing myself out, being crazy busy, working as hard as I could, putting in the biggest effort possible-- more hours of daycare meant more time to work, more hours of daycare meant I needed to work more time... and clients come and go, projects come and go... and
finally, after working like that-- there came a moment when I realized if I cut back on everything, that really, the only thing that would be different is my stress level.
Financially we'd be no better or worse off, but my days would get unwound from the crazy insanity of go go go go go go that I've been running, to something maybe more manageable.

Then, in the middle of that, there is summer, and Doug being away, and serial Della sickness and barfinesses thanks to daycare that kept me/us from being able to go and see him, and finally
yes
stop.
rebuild.
slowly.

Along with this, a new client who is a great fit.
And, my own heartwork, developing it fits and starts, culminating in a workshop I gave yesterday on everyday mindfulness that 11 brave and wonderful women attended... I was absolutely where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing.
Right fit.

So, I am in a rebuilding and regrouping phase. Daycare is not an option for summer, and I need to just know that and plan for it if Doug is away.
Working like a crazy insane person to pay for daycare to come out even or behind is actually crazy and insane of the option for working like a slightly less crazy and insane person leaves me in the same position.

Lesson learned.
For now.
Because right now I am in the saving myself part of the program.