Tuesday, May 28, 2019

More Holy Water


I went to Wakulla Springs today which seems to me at this second like a dream. The water was so cold and so clear that even on the floating dock without my glasses I could see the fish swimming around us.
Jessie belongs to a small mama's group that gets together and does things and today they met up at the springs to swim and play in the sand and chat. She invited me to come too and so I met up with them there and although I'm now exhausted simply from the sun, I'm glad I went. It was probably the least crowded I've ever seen the springs in swimming season and the babies and children were easy to keep track of as we sat in the shade of the cypress trees or in the water.
I enjoyed talking to the mothers. Some of them called me "Miss Mary" which is so very southern and I suppose it's okay. The boys had a great time and didn't want to leave although they were to the point of complete melt-down by the time we left. August and I swam out to the dock, he with his swimmies and me holding his hand. "We are helping each other," I said, and he liked that. He ate most of the sandwich I'd brought.
"I get so hungry sometimes," he said.
"I understand," I told him.
His mother had brought plenty of food but for some reason, my turkey and cheese sandwich made him happiest. I was so happy to share.
One of the mothers recognized me and she looked vaguely familiar to me as well. We could not figure out how we might know each other, though. We named people we might know in common but nothing really rang any bells. She asked me if I ever went to any of the goddess gatherings, which cracked me up.
"Nah," I said. "I don't do things like that."
I never have felt any more comfortable at new-agey things than I have at a church. It all feels about the same to me. Anytime you start throwing around magical rituals and divine inspirations or interventions, no matter what you call them,  I'm outta there. I remember the first time I went to a new-age baptismal celebration and the person who was facilitating the event asked us to acknowledge the four sacred directions of north, south, east and west and even, as I recall, designated each of those with their colors. I felt at once embarrassed and disdainful.
What the fuck? I thought. We're white people. 
This is not to say that I do not recognize and honor the sacred and the holy but they are sacred and holy to me and I'm just not a person who feels the need for others to join me in any sort of ritual or rite to worship them.
Although I guess that being part of a group of young parents and their children at the sacred and holy springs of Wakulla is indeed a joining together in worship but even if it is, we don't need to discuss it. Just being there is all that is needed.
I believe in the most mundane of miracles and don't care a thing about walking on water. Diving into it on a crazy-hot day? Now that's a different thing. That's a miracle, baby. Right there. Turning it into wine?
Whatever.

Oh god, it's hot. The grass is crunchy and brown. I'm surprised the chickens are laying any eggs at all.  I feel like I should bring the baby chicks inside so they don't die of heat stroke. And we need rain. I crave rain.
Talk about your miracles- a good rain with thunder and lightening would be a miracle sufficient unto me right now. The smell of ozone and the sweet feel of a pre-storm breeze would thrill me to my very bones.
And yet, what right do I have to bitch? The midwest is experiencing weather of Biblical proportions. As they shelter in terror from the tornadoes ripping their world apart, I'm whining about heat and not enough rain.
Still, this heat is a reality and before I got on the long backroads to Lloyd from Wakulla Springs, I stopped and bought a large bottle of water simply out of the fear that if I broke down I'd die of dehydration before someone stopped to help me.
And felt guilty for buying bottled water. BECAUSE I SHOULD.

Evening is coming on. It will get cooler and it's supposed to get cooler throughout the rest of the week with high temperatures in the mid to lower nineties. I have air conditioning. I do not have to cook my food and my family's food on a wood stove. Hell, I don't have to grow and raise my family's food. My garden is for fun and and if it all goes to hell, we won't die. And I don't have to water it bucket-by-bucket, hauled from a well. I have the absolute luxury of naming my chickens.
I need to remember these things.

When August and I were on the dock today, looking down into the water, down, down to the sandy bottom he said, "I feel like I see bones."
"There are bones down there," I said. I told him about the mastodon skeletons they've found in that spring and how we can go and look at them in the museum in Tallahassee. He's heard all of this before, even seen the skeleton himself, but I think he wanted to hear it again.
"What's a mastodon?" he asked. "Type it up."
That means to google it. He knows that if we want information about something we can simply go to our phones and type in questions and get answers.
Thus- type it up. 
I met a little three year old girl wearing a pink sunhat today who sang her A,B,C's backwards. On purpose. I could not do that if you held a gun to my head. Her ability to work with numbers amazed me. Her mother told me, "She's never forgotten a thing since she was born." I have a feeling that these were not just the words of an overly proud mother.
Levon spent at least twenty minutes walking from one spot in the shallow water to another to roil the water with his hand and then carefully studied the resulting moving patterns he had created. The ripples and the swirls.

If there is hope for this world, these babies are going to be the reason.

Peace, y'all.

Love...Ms. Moon











7 comments:

  1. That terrible storm that gave us tornadoes in the south of the state is still with us, and I drove home from cards today through blinding downpour, with branches blowing down. I just hoped for the best and followed the yellow line. I'm glad a bit of coolness is coming your way.

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  2. See, I would have pegged you for a goddess lady. I would love to be one of those women but I'm wound a little too tight.

    I had to look up the Wakulla Springs. They look beautiful. Sounds like a fine way to spend a hot day, especially with little ones.

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  3. This does sound like a fine day and a perfect escape from the heat. We're having strangely cool weather out here in southern California -- rain in May, even. I imagine the earth is melting.

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  4. I wish we had clear water rivers, well, we do but up in the hill country. down here they're all muddy, or I suppose the correct term is silty. and so hot here too and need rain. I thought it would never stop raining last winter and early spring and now it has. I'm with you on ritual stuff, I don't participate in it, it makes me feel self conscious and silly.

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  5. I can feel how refreshing that spring must have been, just based on your descriptions. Late spring is often a dry time in Florida, as I recall, before the summer rains begin. They WILL begin soon enough! Directions have colors?! I don't even know what that means.

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  6. Thinking of putting August's sentence "I get so hungry sometimes" on a Tshirt. The story of my life.

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  7. I’ve never seen more beautiful waster than that of Wakulla Springs. I’d go back there in a minute. So glad you live close by.

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