Now The Reason We’re Here

I don’t even know what that means, but it came to me during one of the semi-sleepless nights, that it’s exactly what this week is. Fill in the blanks for what I’ll feel or know or do on any given day. Hour. Minute. It’s been a big week for Scarlet, with starting an after school improv class and an after school assistant job. It’s been a big week for health news of loved ones, and even a little for me. Minor things that I turn into major things – like dental checkups. Or major things that I put off as minor things – like always, always wondering about my heart rate, my lungs, my blood pressure, my blood sugar, my thyroid, my everything. It’s the pitter patter, like little feet, of this steady heartbeat. It rises and falls, rises and falls, just like the thrills and chills of this here week.

It does get exhausting, though, the worry and attention to detail, and the alternate chaos and lack of attention to detail, and everything. I exhaust myself sometimes, if we’re being honest. And other times, I’m cool and calm as a cucumber. I can be piled upon, and I can pile it upon myself. I have an Achilles heel, or two, but we don’t need to talk about them. Not today. Not yet. If it’s all coming up to meet you anyway, then you darn well better prepare for the big arrival. Be welcoming; open and honest. Be bold and brave and kind, always, and know this. That the rises and falls and thrills and chills can drive you crazy and give you whiplash, but nothing has to be horribly set in stone. With everything changing by the instant, that means things change for the better as well. Diseases and ailments, aches and pains, virus counts and body counts. There’s no reason to think it won’t change for the better. And there’s no reason to think anything but that what’s going on in your life might turn out beautifully too. It could be ok. I tell myself this a lot.

This week rolls on, and so does this writing. I started in the beginning, and I keep filling in the blanks. The news comes and goes, and the health news I was waiting for was above and beyond my expectations, and maybe even filling in and fulfilling my dreams. The clouds roll across the sky in a fast pace this week, and we have sunrises and sunsets, moonrises and moonsets, and the ever changing beauty of rain to sun to rainbow to full moon. I get wound and caught up in the frustration and overwhelm of the changes and the discomforts, but I’m always breath-taken by the raw beauty. I used to feel the spark more often. Maybe you know the spark. It’s a certain frequency and passion. It’s a belief that things will be ok, not because things are always ok, but because you have the fire-hot core at your center and it can heat you at your coldest, and set a fire underneath you. It’s that drive, that life-force, that hum. And that’s something that has more than sustained me; has given me wings. Or if not wings, grips, to hug the earth and not fall off.

Love is a nearly unscalable mountain. An ice mountain. The thing is, people learn to climb ice mountains. One foot in front of the other. One icy hand and one nearly iced over heart. People do this with help, and then in turn, are the ones to help. Somehow, somewhere, parts of us are pulsing red and hot and alive. A little numb, and a lot alive. Every day, I work hard and I fight hard, maybe more than the average person, and maybe not. It’s a thick and murky anxiety and discomfort. It thickens and gives way, and I negotiate it against everything contained and not contained in those depths. Life and love and grief and hope. Politics and sickness and melting polar ice caps. Always, the red hot pulsing core. Layers and complexities and embraces. The nearly unscalable mountain walls, with their pathways and clutch holds to light up the night.

The fire within me; us; slow burns. Fast burns. The flames grow closer together yet with their messages of love. It heats us all. The peace and the patience, the words and the appeals, the hope and the laughter, the ways to love and be loved, and the ways they meet in the middle.

This is the week that Rider really perfected my name. It was tentative and blink or you’ll miss it at first. I was out for longer than I usually am, on Wednesday. I walked in through the garage and began to take off my shoes, hearing all three dogs run to greet and sniff me. Rider was in his playpen and I could see him putting his face against the mesh to see me, from down the long hallway. He squealed when he saw me. I rushed in and scooped him up and he melted against me. “Mama,” he said, surely and proudly. He put his hand against my heart. “Mama.”

I went through my whole birthing playlist! I’m starting a new one, based on themes/feelings of the week, or what the Radio Gods are telling me. “Message of Love” is #4 on my new playlist.