Tuesday, April 5, 2016

There's Just No Figuring


That's the picture I sent to Mr. Moon last night just before I fell asleep and I slept for another ten hours and when I woke up, Jack was nowhere to be found and Maurice had taken his place. I like to imagine them meeting at a little time-clock for their shift-change, one of them clocking in and the other clocking out, tiny lunch pails in hand.
"So, how's she sleeping tonight?"
"Like she's dead."
"Good. I'm exhausted. I think there might be a tasty mouse in the library. You might want to check that out."
"Thanks! I will! I'll save you the liver!"
(High fives as they pass each other, of course.)

Also, when I woke up, I was awash in anxiety and where in the world does this shit come from? The past few days I've been so blithe and cheerful, working in my garden, happy to do so and today I can't even imagine taking a walk, getting that far from my minuscule estate of well-being and safety.

Well, whatever and however and whenever, it will pass and I am fine and I am thinking about expectations which I have for myself and which I think others may have for me and I am still that fat little nine-year old, so sad and rocked in her world by fear and by the perceived need to keep an entire world on an even keel which meant hiding horrors and achieving and pretending and protecting and obeying, always obeying, and praying and having absolutely no one to go to for help or relief or succor or understanding.
Just...going on. Always going on and doing my best, even in all of the confusion and fear.
Who was the good little girl?
Oh. Me. I was.

And here I am, all those years later, still wanting to be the good little girl, still wanting so badly to keep everything at peace and good and loved and protected and sometimes I can let all of that go for a bit and just be and drown in the ease and the love and then I wake up and I'm doing a different sort of drowning.

Okay. I feel better just from the writing of it.
Another perfectly gorgeous day of birdsong and chicken clucking and I need to go clean out the baby chicks' home and give them fresh water and food, and the big chicken's nests need to be cleaned and I'm sure there's bamboo to be kicked before it takes over my world.

There's a very good interview with Keith Richards going around and one of the things he said in it was in response to the question, "You've never believed in growing up, have you?"
"No. That's a concept younger people have about older people."

It's so true. As I've always said, we are all of the ages that we've ever been. I AM still that fat little nine-year old girl, so confused and hurt and lost, just as I am an ecstatic new mother and at the same time, a girl having her first crush, a young woman going through a baffling and dark depression, a child on a mountain cooking potatoes and carrots over an open fire and feeling a satisfaction that never leaves, a newly-wed woman wishing so much that she did not feel so broken, wanting to give her beautiful new husband a heart that was so much more whole and less fractured, wanting desperately to believe in love and afraid that it was nothing but a fairy tale.

I am all of those people, and tomorrow I will be a Mary who has this woman in her as well, a woman who woke up on a beautiful day, anxious and caved in, but who made it another day.

Enough of that, enough of this. I see that Maurice is waiting out by the hen house as if she knows I am coming out there soon to clean it.

The older I get, the less inclined I am to want to waste one day, especially a beautiful one like this and so it goes.

Love...Ms. Moon


5 comments:

  1. It's funny how it feels like you wrote this just for me today. I'm such a good girl but I wasted a lot of today. But then I cooked good nutritious and healthy food and now I've decided not to watch tv. It's funny how it's often about forgiving yourself about what was wasted just before so you don't waste the next bit. I wish you beauty in the garden.

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  2. Mwa- It was a rocky damn day but I survived. Some days that's all you can say. And the garden is beautiful and I did enjoy my time there.

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  3. I'm sorry you've been having extra anxiety ... good to have the valium on hand ... and I don't feel any more grown up than I did in my teens - I feel I know a few more things and I've certainly experienced more things, but - older? no.

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  4. I love your image of the cats changing shifts. It reminds me of the old Warner Brothers cartoon with the wolf and the sheepdog, both clocking in to play their respective roles.

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  5. jenny_o- Ugh. It just sucks so much and I have no control over it. But at least with age comes some experience and I know it will pass.

    Steve Reed- Yes! Me too!

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