I’m so not a numbers gal (ask the women I met with over a budget just last night). However, for whatever reason, the not-in-the-milestones-book marker of my reaching forty-seven-and-a-half actually made it onto my radar screen (for the record, it’s today). Why? This puts me three quarters of the way through my forties and has me thinking about this last chunk of time till I turn that somewhat impressive five-oh.
I could—and in my mind, do—make lists of things I’d like to accomplish between now and then or ways I’d like to evolve into being. At the same time I’ve been thinking about some pretty basic things, like sleeping more, stretching more, being present for my family through all the growth these couple of years will bring for the kids (a second one to teendom and high school, a driver—can you say, scarier than college—another child hitting two digits, an almost kindergartener). Wow.
There’s some inherent push and pull here. The speeding up, as in how much work can I squeeze into a day that also includes actively engaging in family life meets the slowing down like some strange weather event (what did I read about, thundersnow?).
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Meantime, my boyfriend’s back. Thank goodness. He has experienced about thirty hours of his cranky, demanding daughter’s mending; she lurches from tears to tantrums to clinging, with a few placid moments tossed in to assure her parents’ tenuous grip on approximating something resembling patience. Lifted from the minute-to-minute responsibilities yesterday, I found myself on the physical therapist’s table saying that I felt exhausted and anxious, depleted from the ordeal of this demanding solo parenting stretch with a very sick child. He explained that I was so knotted up it would be hard to breathe. It was hard to breathe, had been for a couple of days.
As some of the tensions unfurled, I found myself so very tired I can barely put words to it. A friend had wished for me my own thaw after Saskia’s illness, offering the image of sap. We New Englanders love the sensations that accompany sap season, the quickening flow of a world turning toward spring with its brighter sunshine and drips and rushes and melts. The world seems so gentle whilst being so energized. His is such a perfect wish.
This morning—still chilly out, but warming—I realized that the gnarled and seemingly impossibly knotted place in me takes me right back to the months we didn’t know whether Saskia would remain ours (her first father stated his intention to block the adoption; he did not follow through, but there were months of increasingly tense waiting). For months, I could not really breathe. Anniversaries often deliver us to old feelings and old sensations. My body did the same thing these past few days. The sap, and the rings around the trees, the way light reminds us of other light, it all makes this deep sense to me. There are so many ways to come back around.
So, I am breathing. I’m moving slowly. I’m practicing gentleness. I’m savoring that little give the thaw offers up.
I’m noticing that red-black color you see when you close your eyes in the sun, which you can only find when it’s warm enough to lift your face towards its warmth. I’m trying, simply for now, to hold the sensation. I’ll leave the rest for another day.
