Mr. Moon is back from his travels and he is working on the baby chicken coop. I have been working in the garden most of the afternoon, weeding and listening to another James Lee Burke book on CD. The sun is pouring out its last gold and the sprinkler is on in the garden, I can hear its gentle spray, the birds' evening calls, the cars on the highway, heading to wherever it is they are going.
I have leftovers to heat up and I am going to cook field peas from last summer's garden which are in the freezer. This year's peas are about to bloom and there will be fresh soon.
It is all serene and shining in this late afternoon light and it has been a day of quiet and mostly solitude for me. Two cardinals are at the feeder, a male and a female and I can hear the crunch of the seeds in their beaks as they eat and the rusty sound of magnolia leaves as they drop. They are being pushed off by the new leaves growing in. I have not driven in traffic or had to deal with strangers on any level today. I should be at perfect peace.
And I am fine but there is this well of something inside of me which is still uneasy. It is probably all nothing more than a matter of the rush of anxiety I was flooded with last night, still making its way through my bloodstream with its potent and unneeded chemicals.
This is when it is best to simply do the simple things. To wash dishes, to cook supper, to put away the laundry, to listen to the birds and the water on the garden and the different voices of the wind chimes as they ring and tinkle, according to their size, in the breeze.
To accept that which has been given me and to let the feelings pass through me as they will.
I feel selfish and self-absorbed, writing this now but this is my life, this is the way a woman feels sometimes as she is pulled and pushed by forces as simple and mysterious as the tide, the moon, the heated rush of left-over adrenalin, perhaps even the lack of holding a baby for an entire day, the lack of a child calling out for his grandmother for an entire day.
Those thick, waxy leaves tremble on the ends of their branches, the breeze catches them and they fall.
I ascribe no meaning to any of this beyond exactly what it is.
There. That.
This.
Enough.
Sometimes what we need most is solitude, but once we've had it what we need most is our loves.
ReplyDeleteI too have been in the garden all day, digging, weeding and mowing, thinking all the same sorts of things that you are thinking.
ReplyDeleteSo nice to come in here now for cold lemon water and a lovely benediction from the church of The BSC to which we are all so happy to belong :)
There's a cool breeze blowing through the palms out here on the west coast, Ms. Moon, and it's making me uncharacteristically melancholy. Or maybe characteristically. Everything seems suspended, me ineffectual and somewhat ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI used to have those adrenalin rushes when my wife would drink. It depleted me entirely for a number of hours, sometimes days. I'm glad to not be doing that now. Life is much more on an even keel.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it that flows through a woman that can unsettle and then after a time we are back in rhythm with life and love?
ReplyDeleteYou reading where I was and your comment...I take heed Mary. I'm learning, slowly that these turbulent emotions or anxiety or fear will pass and a calm will unfold it's wings over me. Like a warm hug that I should appreciate more.
"Those thick, waxy leaves tremble on the ends of their branches, the breeze catches them and they fall."...a poetry of vision...
Glad your man found his way back to you. Isn't it a drag how emotions can capture us and hold us in their spell?
ReplyDeleteHow nice that you found handles to cope with what is on your plate: doing simple things that require not a lot of brain activity. Grounding as it's called in Gestalt: doing things that feed you, hands in the earth, washing dishes, little things that make a lot of difference...