What is living in you at this moment? What duet of wonder and grief marks your world?
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Alive in me is the imprint of a hand, spat on one-hundred thousand years ago. Alive inside is a cowering instinct to shelter as branches rake the sky, handled roughly by the marching wind.
The story inside my story.
The reflex, the cycle, the molecules spinning in their daily work. Invisible power raking at my temperament, blustering my inner eye so that the day appears blurry and far away.
I am always in my hot pink fluffy robe now it seems. Padded wooly socks up to my knees, traipsing from kitchen to living room, to makeshift school office. Feeding children cheerios, raisins. Offering nice hot tea that always sits undrunk next to the math cubes, Chrome book, and mini dry erase board that has become my child’s new school.
We are alive, the three of us, under the roof skittered by Redwood bracts, gray squirrels chittering just beyond the window.
We are alive as we call to each other from room to room, “Mom! Can you put on a story?”
“Can you come finish your food please!?”
Our warm little bodies so safe and cozy inside walls of wood, plaster, insulation. Padded from the sting of cold, the gasp of a high wind rattling the treetops.
My thoughts ramble around too, inside my head. Buffered from the tension of a “real work” day, soothed by podcasts and News Hours. Dinging from moment to moment, through the cavernous space of open time.
It is joyful and agonizing.
Relentless freedom, harnessed only by my conjured intention. “Who wants to go outside today?”
My children have full use of the power of not hearing things. They instead pour intricate stories all over their Legos and Magnatiles. A complex social web of miniature plastic molded figures inhabits our living room. Their world is enormous and constantly opening into newer modalities. The red Magnatile house transforms quickly into a flying Triangular Prism Mobile, blasting to the sanctuary of the carboard box, freshly painted to house the green Sorry game characters as well as the runaway Lego teenager.
The vastness of possibilities is choking sometimes. I catch my mind as it churns, searching for a hold or purchase in the sea of endless life. I can’t help calling up the images of homeless people, Yemeni children, my ancestors who died scratching at the ground- starved by a blighted potato and a wretched system.
It’s not for the purpose of stirring up guilt that these images arise. It is to keep my swirling mind within some kind of boundary, something with perspective and an open row for intention to be planted.
My hands hold cups of tea and my hot pink phone- scrolling for a light to rest on. Searching, searching for the point of all of this.
Inside me, millennia of molecular dances, pairings, transformations, bindings, excretions.
The Universe rolls as the estrogen surges, progesterone drops. I’m physically reminded of the inside life of hormones as I cramp and bleed, feel sleepy and grouchy.
And slowly, as the red fades to brown, I watch out the window as a marvelous school of bright yellow leaves swim through the sky- hurtling excitedly towards the mystery of whatever is next.