I should be with my father. That's my first thought. I should be wrapping his present, picking out the scmaltziest, gushiest card I can find. I'm not.
He's here with me, in here, but the change in form is too great. It's too painful, and I can't understand it.
I want to understand it. I want a sign.
We made a pact, or I made the pact and he agreed, whomever gets there first, wherever that is,
will send the other one a sign. Maybe I should have said what the sign would be, but I didn't.
Maybe I didn't think I'd ever have to live that pact. And now I do. And I don't like it.
I think of Eleanor Roosevelt - "You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
She survived the death of her father, whom she adored, and her mother, and a marriage that was difficult.
And I think of Dai Sil - when it gets really bad, she said, I just tell myself I'll get through it, I don't call you, more for myself, I don't call to see if I can do it, and when I do it, when I get through without calling you, I feel better for myself.
At noon, I walk down the path to the stand of my three favorite trees.
I came here after 9/11 with Isabel and Amalia and we sat under the trees and did a meditation.
I can't meditate, not today.
I stand beside one thin tree and wrap my arms around it. Outloud I say St. Francis's prayer.
Before I get through it, I'm crying. I get louder, sobbing.
Then I see a flicker of something moving up on the hill.
It's a doe. She's standing there and she looks at me. She stares.
I look back. I keep crying. She keeps looking.
I imagine she'll come closer to see what I'm doing. She doesn't
She stands at the top of the hill eyes fixed on me. Then she cocks her ears to the side of her head, she looks away. She's done with me, bored by my tears ?
For some reason this makes me stop crying, and we both walk away, she returns to the business of being a deer, (maybe she's going to spread some deer ticks to be sure I'll have at least one latch onto me)
I go back to the business of human life.)
Our lives do not join each others. We're in two different worlds.
Or at least that's what it seems like.
I return to my seat by the stream. I spend most of the day, as I do most days up here, outdoors.
I'm in the air, it's a change from NY.
Most days there I spend indoors.
I watch the birds here, listen to the water, bat the bugs away, look at the lizards on tree trunks, watch spiders weave webs, and notice the sway of tree branches.
Everything in its place, that what's Byron Katie would say.
Everything here to be noticed, or not. Here my eyes fall on shadows on the tree trunk, sun on a leaf, light on the rocks along the stream, and the stillness that accompanies everything.
Peace.
I'm blessed to have a place like this. Blessed, lucky, fortunate.
These last years I did the best I could with everything, including my house.
A part of me wants to say I wish I had done better, but that's the perfectionist part,
the judge and jury, guilty, didn't do enough ! Take her away ! Next.
I don't know exactly what that better would have looked like, if I had spent more time here, less with my father, I would have been remorseful. I do feel some remorse for the times I was up here doing nothing, but I'm trying to let go of that.
If he had needed me, I would have been there.
If I thought he wanted me, I would have been there.
One thing about not feeling your own worth, you misjudge what others might love about you and how your presence brings them joy.
And believing there could have been a better way is believing in the "idea" of me," not the real me.
The real me has mice in her house, carpenter ants crawling around the corners, spiders, maybe a squirrel in her attic, that big, black snake and who knows what else.
The real me makes a mess sometimes of life situations and houses, doesn't always feel the way I think I'm supposed to feel, forgiving, patient, loving, kind....
No, the real me has "reptiles" as St. Teresa of Avila called them, " those interior sufferings of mind, heart, and spirit that you need to face and expel from your soul," crawling around her inner space.
Who can "exterminate" those? Me?
only me.
I'm working on it.
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