I wrote a very raw post a few days ago,
which took me literally hours and hours to write…
but I deleted it for a couple of reasons.
One…
I was concerned it misrepresented a very dear person who I credit with being part of my Life Safety Net. In the beginning of my post, I wrote words my counsellor said to me, and I don't know that I gave him, or them, justice. Out of context, the words he said seemed less kind than they were in real life, as he sat a leg length away, listening. The words he said were couched in enormous empathy and understanding. I wish you'd been there to see how much they helped, and how much it helped to talk to him.
I don't know how things would be if I didn't see my 'Professional Brain Sorter' every month or so…if I wasn't able to tip my thoughts out in front of him, like bright pebbles in a sack, and have him there to sift through them all with me. All those bits and bobs and tears and joy…together we try to make sense of it all. I am lucky to have people like that in my life. It's not something I take lightly.
Two…
I thought my words might be too dark and just too heavy.
They weren't supposed to be.
I
want to write about homeschooling and our camping trips and swimming and hugs and all my workshops and just how many times we laugh in a single day… but my fears at the Unravelling State of the World seem to be sitting on my shoulders saying, "Oy! Write about us first! Hurry! Hurry! Get everyone to listen! Something must be Done! Nothing else matters but us!" And so those are the words that come out here.
I want to make a difference in this world.
I want to make a difference. But I'd like to remember to live, too.
I don't know how, in this year of incredible experiences and magical growth and glorious discoveries, I ended up writing more and more about the things that concern me, and bring me down. And almost not at all about the marvellous Everything Else. But I suppose that's part of the journey, right? You don't know what's going to take up space in your brain. You share what you care about, in that moment, the thoughts that rise, the things that you think of in the spaces in between. You just have to hope that the Hard and the Heavy don't fill your pockets and sink you. You have to hope you'll notice the joy, too.
So in the spirit of noticing and finding joy (Remember that, self?
Finding joy.) I want to share the music that got me through the recent Really Rough Patch I wrote about in my deleted post.
And I'll share some of those deleted words because I want to share the moment, as I was listening to beauty, things seemed to begin to turn around…
And tomorrow will be another day, where I am certain I will laugh, and my children will hug me, and I will love them like crazy and my husband will be funny,
and I will smile at all the living things.
The music
(aka the soundtrack to the following words…)
The words
And you notice…
that all these days of being battered by sorrow and
confusion and despair, you've STILL fed your kids and laughed with them because
they are inspiring and beautiful,
and you've made sure they know they are loved.
Somehow, you've taken them swimming and taught your
girl algebra and filmed your son juggling and been proud of your husband and
doled out hugs like people handing out balloons at the mall.
You haven't shouted at anyone and every single day
you've gotten out of bed.
You've smiled at passers by and you've let people
go ahead of you on the road. You've chatted to friends; you've scratched the
dog's belly and stared into his old, old eyes. You've run your workshops and
forgotten about the Awful and the Mad for those magic, light-filled hours.
You've told silly stories to small children. You have made puppets.
You've found … lying determinedly on the
flipside of madness, is delight.
Delight is reaching through water as you swim lap
after lap of the pool, your hands pulling you forward. You swim between your
kids as they play. You poke at their bellies under water as you pass them by,
and make them laugh.
Delight is listening to your son tell you about
neutrons and the theory of 'intersubjectivity' from his university history
class; it's him showing you his new juggling video; it's watching as he
balances a swim noodle on his chin in the pool.
Delight is hearing your girl laugh at a line in the
Princess Bride, her latest book. It's her telling you about her newest
animation project; it's your girl's arms thrown around you on the couch for no
other reason than Because.
Delight is music, found and held, three days ago.
You reached for it then like it was a lifejacket, thrown as you bobbed about on
the echoing waves, there under a fathomless sky, alone in a sea you'd built
with your mind.
Delight was that moment, three days ago, as you
listened to that song.
There you are, do you see?
You are sitting at the computer, bathed in only a
dim square of light. Night pulses, possums scritch the eucalypts outside. Kids
are in bed, your husband is far, far, far away somewhere in the house; you've
shut him out with those headphones on; you can't even speak to tell him how sad
and afraid you are.
The song begins, it's enormous, it's beautiful.
Everything hurts.
The cat wanders by, his tail effortlessly high; he
peers at you. You are just another breathing thing in this house, just another
thing. But in that moment, suddenly, he's all you have. You will, you wish—all
your senses reaching—for him to leap into your lap and stay.
He leaps up. He pauses, two paws balanced on each
thigh. Does he sense, his tail twitching slightly, how deep your despair runs
right now?
The music rises, builds. Will he stay? Will he
stay?
As the music opens up and lays you bare, the cat
turns into a fur circle, and lies down. You pull him close. His paw reaches to
wrap around your arm. He stays.
You are so grateful, you cry.
It is the first time you've cried, all these long,
Mad days. You don't know how many there have been; more than one, more than
enough.
Everything curves out from this. The song. Your tears.
The cat. The warm. It's the beginning of something else.
The beginning of talking to people you love…again,
again…and the beginning of reaching out.
There, do you see it?
Somewhere on the spinning disc that is madness and
delight bound impossibly together,
perhaps pinned to the ridged, thin seam in between
or perhaps floating around it, like an idea
or an electron cloud,
is something a tiny bit like hope.
