LATE FALL CHILLS

L

With the end of October, comes the first really cold weather this year.  October has been pretty mild and this last week we did have to get a woodfire burning to take the chill off... but only once or twice. The leaves seem to be late falling this year too. When I take Sadie out walking in the mornings...there are many reminders of the winter moving slowly in our direction. I love the drying milkweed. The little girls next door do too...between the dandilion seed heads and the milk weed pods exploding to throw their internal seeds to the far reaching winds, I enjoy watching their enjoyment. They blow on the dispersing seeds in their effort to help Mother Nature get her seed spreading work done. And I ponder the seed waiting for the moving gust that will carry it on to it's next incarnation. I kind of feel like that milk weed pod full of seeds hanging on till the wind catches them. My growth has slowed down. The monarchs have come and gone. The landscape is full of dried plants and bittersweet. The coming of winter is undeniable. I've popped my lid and all the seeds of future growth are laid bare to the moving air. One of these days a big old gust will pick up some of those seeds and send them packing to find a new spot that will support the future generations. The pace of my life has changed. It's much slower. I watch the busy busy people stressed out from running around trying to do too much and after I feel the initial stabs of guilt, that I should be so lucky to have some time to myself...the gratitude sinks in. I feel so grateful that I have a life partner that is my best friend. We have worked hard together and as a result, we have created much that nourishes and sustains us. Yes. I'm unemployed. But the only time I feel bad about that is when I'm amidst the clashing egos of the corporate world...a world I 've explored and said...thanks but no thanks. There is a space full of peace within me. I have the luxury of offering myself as a volunteer to my own family. My mother is being discharged home from rehab after a bad fall in September. She will go home on my Dad's birthday and because I'm unemployed, I can offer myself up as a helper for a couple of weeks. Tommorrow I head down to Salem. I feel like I'm on the threshold of a big adventure. Everything is unknown. Of course, thats the way it always is but when the current grabs you and you have a job, it holds you in place. You have to make your plans around your work schedule. You are anchored to one spot. Without a job, there is no bouy...no anchor holding you in one place. Suddenly you are a ship moving out to sea and headed into unknown weather with a flexibility to accomodate whatever comes up. And if your job doesn't hold you in place...then your dog will or your husband and children will...but when they are all grown up and able to care for themselves...well...thats when your life resembles a milkweed pod awaiting that cold blast of wind. If you are a seed...you don't want to hold on to the pod too tight or you'll miss your ride. And if you are the pod, you don't want to hold too tight to your seeds or your future generations won't get planted. Your holding on will prevent them from generating their own. So the best rule of thumb is to "let Nature take her course". Don't hold on too tight or let go too soon. It's like that with your mother. If I'm the seed, then she was the pod...if I'm the pod, then my loving actions are the seeds. The wind is blowing. My choice to be there for my mother is a prayer in action. I have the luxury of being able to respond to her in her time of need and I feel the gratitude for my amazing freedom. But there is a chill to the wind...a cold forshadowing of the winter to come. While I chill out with Mom for a few weeks, the edge of winter encroaches. I breathe in and relax knowing all is as it should be. When I forget to breathe and I become fearful of the unknown, I freeze and my motion becomes restricted. I tense up and turn a cold shoulder to the cold and the icy edges are sharp and cutting. When I breathe, I let go and allow timing to be in the hands of a greater intelligence. My goal is to move confidently into the ebb and flow of the energy of my life and to trust the breath of spirit that guides my ship...no matter if I am the pod or the seed. One is the one who releases. The other is that which is released. I am not in charge of the timing. I'm not in charge of natural events bringing on the edge of winter. I am just one little person who has a couple of weeks to spend caring for her Mom. And if the wind blows from a certain direction? Well, that is Mother Nature's department...and it is she that determines my course.

MAKE A WISH

Late fall promises to be a challenge for me this year. My mother fell...and she did it up big...back on September 12th. She's been in rehab and they will be discharging her home next week. Their recommendation is for 24/7 supervision in order to keep her safe. After hitting Broad Street with her right cheekbone and forehead, her cognitive skills are not likely to ever be the same. She has had a cerebral shower somewhere along the way but the big right brain damage may have actually been what caused her to fall. She easily becomes confused and disoriented. If she heads to the bathroom she can easily get distracted and forget what she is doing. Her motor planning is poor and walking with a walker can put her into strange conundrums...how to turn so her rear end lands on the seat. She also has significant left side peripheral blindness that can cause her to misjudge location...and she can keep bumping into the same obstruction over and over without a clue as to how to successfully proceed. The thing is...she is otherwise still herself. She is charming and funny...full of jokes and not very demanding. She can still perform her own toilet and with lots of verbal cues, she can dress herself. And eating? No problem. The rehab wanted us to send her to a longterm care facility. And we can't do it. Mom has always made her heart clear regarding end of life. She wants to die at home...plain and simple. She has never questioned that outcome and therefore, has never planned or even thought about the possibility that she may not be able to stay home until the moment of her death. She repeatedly comments on how much she loves her home and how lucky she has been to live so comfortably. We, her four daughters, want to grant her her wish if at all possible. I can't even begin to share the crests and troughs of emotions that I have experienced with her as my mother. I've screamed in a fit of rage...I hate you to her. I've cried alone wishing she would comfort me and I've written her poems expressing my love. Somehow. as she stands at the threshold of her end of life, all the baggage of a lifetime falls away. I put my arms around my brain-injured mother and look into her blue blue eyes and I can't remember anything. All that exists is my love for her and my prayer that her wish be granted. Tomorrow I will seek out the Meteor showers that will occur as our planet passes through a debris field of Halley's comet. They predict a shower of shooting stars. 15 per hour. Is that enough stars to wish on? All the time of 59 years has passed and my mother is 85. Yet I am still her child...I still feel her all caring arms around me and her ever present curiosity in what I am doing in my life. Who will I be when she is no longer there to reflect my existence? The whole universe shifted when Dad died...what will happen without her to relate to? I remain that small child...her number 2 daughter...and when I go down to offer my care and support as she comes home...I hope I will have wished on 100 stars for her one desire to come true. She really never asked for much.

TRACKING

The concept of "tracking" has come up a few times this week in several different forms. I went down to Salem, Mass. where I was born and lived the majority of my childhood years, to visit my mother who had a bad fall and is in rehab. It was four days of a return to being primarily a daughter. It was also the week Steve Jobs passed away. Tracking is a word that has fascinated me in the past...I 've written poems about it and fantasized being a student of Tom Brown tracking my authentic life in the tangle of earthly distraction. I admired a woman who wrote a book called Tracking...she was Australian and she walked solo across the continent of Australia with three camels who had their own ideas about the path they should take. The poem I wrote about Tracking was about stepping out onto a field of fresh white and virgin snow and making tracks fearlessly. On one visit with my mother, I arrived during a therapy session. She was working with the OT on tracking excersises. She has had a series of strokes that have weakened her left side and the left peripheral vision. On the paper, she had to connect small numbered circles from #1 through #25. The purpose was to strengthen her tracking ability. She struggled to complete the activity particularly with the circles that appeared on the left side of the paper. I watched and realized...it's really human to default to what comes easiest to us. What is easy is generally what is strong within us. We tend to avoid our weak areas but if we do so, we truly run the risk of living a lopsided life. We all desperately need to exersise and strengthen the very things we tend to fail at in order to lay track in our brains for a whole life. This is where conciousness and effort kicks in. Life invites us...in fact demands us to use our whole selves if we are to discover meaning and satisfaction in our short time on Earth. If we choose to use only what comes easy, we miss out. It is the shadowy, shy...wild , uncivilized part of ourselves that we need to somehow invite out to play...we need to strengthen and educate and love the part of ourselves that is the most inept, unbecoming, unpredictable and uncooperative part of ourselves. If do do only what comes easy, we set ourselves on a circular track and we go round and round wondering why it is we always return to the same challenge. Steve Jobs gave a talk several years ago to a class of college grads. He talked about doing what you love...trusting your intuition and following your own dream as opposed to fullfilling someonelse's set of expectations for you. He talked about connecting the dots...but that that tracking must be done in hindsight. You have to lay down the dots of your life by living it and finding the track...finding the pattern...learning to make sense of it all comes in the looking back, not in the looking forward. As I listened to him give his talk...I thought about my elderly Mom lying in the hospital connecting dots for the OT. I think about my own journey of life on this planet. Sometimes I get bogged down in trying to sense the sense of it all...trying to analyze and understand the whys and wherefores. I imagine that I can make my life whole and complete by bullying myself into change. Yet as I talk meanly to my self in ways that I'd never speak to anyone else thinking I might create a motivation for positive movement, I believe I am immobilizing myself with self loathing. Instead, I should be treating myself like my aging Mother...gentle...respectful...calm...knowing the whole picture will be seen eventually. If I want real change...I need to lay down a new track like a bridge over chaos and depression and ineptitude. I need to notice my strengths and exercise my weakness...not hide them under the rug. One needs to be a child at some things. A beginner. A fool setting off on a journey the world considers foolish. Steve Jobs spoke concisely and clearly about it all in that one speech he gave at Stanford. Listen to it. Listen to your inner self and then stop critisizing and labeling and sabotaging yourself...and just do it. A sacred moment can happen anywhere...at any time. But it cannot be forced or contrived to happen. The prayer and the prayed for open in their own time like a flower opening...from the deep inner timing of it self and not before. If you want to travel the track of the positive...you have to lay it down first in your brain and in the way you talk to yourself and encourage yourself. Choose not to bully yourself. Choose not to believe in the negative self talk. Choice is everything. And it is the only real power.