PORTALITY

I like to get on my treadmill for a 30 minute session of making my heart beat a strong rhythm. When I walk and jog, I blast my favorite tunes and close my eyes imagining that this hampster wheel excersise is moving me toward light...a lighter weight, a lighter attitude, a lighter sense of perspective...heck an incredible lightness of being. I dedicate my 30 minutes to the Creative Spirit...or God if you wish...whatever you call it, its the great orderly flow that my own cells are made from. I guess its rather like a form of moving meditation and I would probably be smart to do it before I write instead of after, because I always get some kind of new awareness. Today...it comes in the form of a new word. As I contemplate my mother's mortality, I encounter a relationship with portality...a through the glass darkly phenomenon...a slide down a tunnel or a rabbit hole...a secret door that I can finally open. Over the last two years mortality has been sitting on my shoulders. Intensely. First, Stephen required quadruple bypass surgery in May 2010 and that was a long intense dance with the unknown. Then came Priscilla passing in March 2011. And now Mom and her very bad fall in September. It dawned of me as I treaded my mill that these are the 2 years that I have recieved a particular gift...the gift of being able to devote myself full time to my garden. Actully it began in 2009 when Stephen tilled me up the beds and fenced in my space because there were so many deer roaming about. He put that fence up and I began to feel like a baby in her playpen. My friend April taught me to refer to my garden time as playtime and as a result, I found an unquenchable thirst for spending my energy in that spot. So for three years, I've spent spring, summer and fall 100% committed to my garden...planting, weeding, tending, watering, pruning, pinching, picking, putting up, preparing and serving. For the first time in my life I've been focused on one thing. What a rare and amazing luxury. And I'm not sure I fully GOT IT until now. What a simple pleasure to tend one's own back yard. And what has it given me? Besides food...good healthy pestiside free food that seems to love me as much as I love growing it? Well...the more I ponder it, the more I see the gifts.

First...I've learned that when I don't think I can do one more thing...I can. I can always go a little further than I think I can and that thought has been lifechanging. Perhaps the original prototype for this lesson was set in motherhood because I always thought I couldn't take one more minute and I always took many more. Ha. So much for limits.

Second...No matter how much the weather and the bugs and the diseases thwart my growing efforts, there is always something that does well...and I don't need to hover over every tender shoot because that fearful hovering can cause a person(me) to overwater and encourage superficial root systems. A little neglect is healthy.

Third...the whole world seems to plot against maintaining focus. As a lifelong member of the ADHD club, I became ,with my teachers full support, just one more human being who knows a little about alot but who loses focus easily...so easily that finishing things is a rare occurrence. Before moving to Maine, I remember grieving the fact that everytime I planted a garden, I missed the harvest. The seduction of distractions has always been a personal difficulty. And I'm a master at distracting myself. So...the luxury of focus and follow through have been gifts of my garden.

And fourth? Tending my garden...working for Mother nature...doing what needs to be done and doing it all for the sake of the satisfaction it gives as opposed to doing it for money...well that is a first. So my garden is not just a garden...it is a portality. It is an opening I can slip through to become more of what I am...an amazing female mystery and it gives me exactly what I need right now to support my aging mother as she faces her mortality and end of life choices. Writing brings me to the opening...allows me to see the connections...and peering through the portal...what do I see? I'm growing a portality. And who cares if it isn't a word. Its my word.