Wedding Moments

I call Juliann my red-headed stepchild. As a teen, she and her brother spent the better part of several summers with me and my kids, and during those visits, she grew near and dear to my heart. It has been my honor and privilege to watch her grow up, to give her advice that she sometimes even takes. Her life, through no fault of her own, has not been a bed of flower petals, but despite (or perhaps, partly because of) the hard things she's lived through, she has grown to be beautiful, inside and out. She works hard, she loves fiercely, and she dreams anyways.

And, this past weekend, she married her high school sweetheart. 

They haven't been together during all the years since high school; life sent them down separate paths for the better part of a decade. But since they reconnected three years ago, it's been fun to watch them create an adult version of that adolescent love. They haven't shied away from asking the hard questions. They've worked hard to lay the groundwork of a solid foundation, on which they are building a lasting relationship.

My red-headed dear carries a lot of weight on her shoulders. I watched with delight as, on her wedding day, she set down every one of those cares, and just let herself feel the joy of the moment. As she and Josh stood beneath the wedding arch, looked tenderly at each other, and exchanged the vows they had created, my heart soared.

There's something about the hope inherent in a wedding that brings tears to my eyes. It takes courage to look around at the debris which is the end state of many marriages, and decide to commit to one another for a lifetime.

At the dance after the ceremony, the DJ called all married couples onto the dance floor and the music started. After a moment, he asked those married less than two years to leave the floor. The music played on. Five, ten, fifteen years - already there were only a few people remaining in the dance. When he got to thirty years, it was just my sister Julia and her husband Ed still moving to the music, looking at each other with laughter, and perhaps a bit of amazement, because they've made it this far.

I hope, in thirty years, Juliann and Josh will be at a wedding, and will be dancing just such a dance. I hope they will still look at each other with tenderness and care as they circle the floor, the better part of a lifetime of love still holding them together.

Settling In

It has nothing to do with the rest of today's blog entry, but I got a kick out of the scene in this photo, which I took while walking around the park earlier this week.

Title: "I are a goose??!??!"

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I've had two whole weeks of my new yoga class, and, it turns out, I can do this. (At least as long as it's summer, and it starts to get light at 6 in the AM of the morning.) And, not only 'can' I do this, I WANT to do this. So far, I can easily get out of bed, even when I'm a bit tired, when this is the regimen I am getting out of bed for. 

The version of me who is exhausted and overworked has reveled in the two mornings each week when my day has started with:

Get up

Walk the dog

Eat breakfast

Go to Yoga

Sit for an hour with my coffee and the crossword puzzle

Go to Tone Class

Go home, clean up, and eat lunch

"Whose life is this??? Surely, not mine!", thinks that past version of me. I've expended a lot of time and energy caring for others most of my life. It feels decadent, indulgent even, to spend so much of a day just taking care of me, and I must admit, I rather like it! By noon, I am stretched, exercised, and ready to tackle whatever it is I have on my schedule for the rest of the day.

I've (almost) always been able to get me out of bed, ready or not, to meet whatever morning commitments I have. At the same time, I've spent many years fighting exhaustion that ran so deep that I never woke up feeling refreshed and ready to go. 

I don't quite know how to put into words how good it feels to want to get out of bed, even if it's just two mornings a week. Even if the feeling doesn't last, I now know it's possible to feel it. I know there is a future for me beyond exhaustion, and that I'm taking some right steps to reach it.

It's a good feeling.

Mountain Musings

When I was a little girl, in second grade, I once had to bring my big brother his lunch. As I wandered down the other hallway of our school, the hall where the big kids spent their days, I was in awe. "This," I thought. "This is where I will be in just a few long years, and when I am here, I will be big, and I will learn all the important things I need to know to be a good person."

I wasn't all wrong. I never did get to the end rooms of that particular hallway because we switched schools, but I did manage to grow and learn all the things a sixth grader needs to know in this world. But it turns out there's a lot of life beyond sixth grade, and mumblety years later, I'm still working on learning all the important things I need to know to be a good person.

I spent last week in the beauty of the mountains of Colorado, adding a few more items to my life-skills toolbox. I was on a women's retreat called the Web of Wisdom, learning more about the teachings of Virginia Satir, learning to lay the textbook guidelines over the shape my life holds today, and applying them to MY "stuff".

My years are no longer long ones. Time has worked its trick, and where once months stretched on for eons, they're now present-then-past before I've quite grasped they were here. I now know I will never learn all the important things; too many of them are still unknowable. I have a hard time even forming the questions; I know the answers are beyond me.

The concept of Death, and the idea the Universe will end in far-flung dark fragments, these make intuitive sense to me. But life. How can life, so incredibly fragile, spring from chaos to exist?

I look out into the universe after dark, at the complexity of the night sky, and marvel because, were I able to look inward, I would see that same macro complexity on a micro scale. How can this be?

The small spring flower I saw on my walk. Somehow, despite the fact it has no "brain", it knew the time was right to pop its head above the dirt to greet the spring. How do it know what it do and when to do it?

I can't picture the shape a life could possibly take once a physical body dies, but I stop a moment and mourn when I come across a dead bird in the grass. Where did that graceful energy go? I only know it has gone to where I can no longer sense it.

I am closer in age to being old than I am to being young. I know my time to die will quickly be on the horizon, and I am curious. Will I get to find out for myself where the energy, where the self, goes when that happens? Or does the screen just go black? I can't believe my "self" will get to go on, but I also can't believe my energy will just, *poof*, disappear. (Turns out I am rather attached to the notion of my energy-self existing in some form or another. I don't WANT to not be...)

Knowing I will never know the answers both frustrates me - because I want to KNOW, please and thank you! - and delights me - because there is beauty in the mystery.

Beauty Is.

Claw Marks

Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it.

-- David Wallace

I've been thinking of this quote a lot this week. My visits with my friend Bob, who is living with dementia, have proven to be an incremental exercise in letting go.

He's settled in as well as anyone can to his gilded cage; I still visit once or twice a week. I'm not allowed to take him anywhere in my car, but they let us go for walks, so all this past winter, when I came, we'd bundle up and take a turn around the neighborhood. We didn't go real fast, but we'd walk about a mile, holding hands while looking at the trees and the birds, talking about whatever. 

This past month, it's been heartwarming to watch him watch spring unfold. As we walked, he'd marvel at the flowers, at the tender leaves on the trees, at the warmth of the breeze, the sun on his face.

Sadly, two weeks ago, we had an unsettling experience while we were out. We were almost back from our stroll when his left leg decided it didn't want to listen to him, and he began having extreme difficulty walking. About the time I was ready to call for help, the nurses saw us struggling and came out to assist. 

After some food, rest, and Tylenol, the episode passed, and he's almost returned to normal (whatever that is). But now, of course, we can no longer go out for walks in the neighborhood, and instead are restricted to the small secured yard off their dining area.

So, the sphere of his world inexorably closes in one more ring. He hates it. We both do.

This is hard. It feels like the opposite of watching a child grow - instead of marking all the firsts, I now note the lasts of our long friendship. The last time we went out to eat. The last time he was able to come work in my garage. Now, the last time we took a long walk together. 

My leaf, the one I wrote about a few weeks back, is finally gone from the tree. Whether it wrenched itself free and took the leap, or the tree finally let go of the last of the threads holding it close, I will never know, but the coming of spring seems to have forced the issue.

There are still a lot of threads holding me to Bob; it hurts to see them snap one by one. It's not yet time to complete the process of letting go of our friendship, but that time is on the horizon.

I only hope, as with the tree, that the snapping of that last thread will herald a return to a new cycle of life for him. 

For me, I will try to keep the claw marks to a minimum.

Change Comes Calling

But, but, but, I only like change when it's change I like!

I have been loving my 8:30 Friday morning yoga class. It's been the perfect way to wind up my exercise week. It gives me a marker for the weekend to come. Jordan has a way of helping me to ground myself in mind, body and spirit. She asks good questions, gives good guidance, and clearly tries to live within the guidelines of the precepts she teaches.

Hers is one of the classes that helped to break me out of my Covid-space; the people there were some of the first to see me, to make room for me, and to welcome me into their circle.

So, it was with some dismay that I listened to her announcement last week at the start of class - this will be our last Friday morning class together. "WHAT??? NO!", my mind shouted so loudly I almost missed her next words. She told us she teaches Level II classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7:30, and we would be welcome to join her there if our schedules permit.

And so the mental debate began. (No, it didn't wait until class was over.) There is no real reason I cannot get up earlier and get to her other classes. But one of my favorite parts of retirement is not having to get up to an alarm. But I love her way of teaching, and if I want to continue to learn from her, I will have to change my ways, and get the dog walked and my butt out the door by 7 in the AM of the morning. But I don't wanna!

I needed to choose, and once I calmed down, the choice was clear. Teachers who can feed my body and soul, both, don't grow on trees. Perhaps this is the Universe's way of nudging me to the next level of yoga. Perhaps I can bring my coffee and have my morning quiet time between yoga and my other favorite class, which starts midmorning those same days of the week. Perhaps good things will come from the change. Good things have come from change in my life before, even when I had to be dragged along kicking and screaming. Perhaps it's time to reacquaint myself with the part of myself that actually likes the early morning hush. Perhaps I could just try it.

It can't hurt to try it.

And so, I've spent the weekend mentally preparing for the change. It's not really so drastic - I ONLY have to get up twenty minutes earlier. I can get up 'just' twenty minutes earlier. I mean, it's not like I can't take a nap later in the day if I'm overly groggy. Naps. I like naps. 

OK. I can try it.

Wish me luck.