skipper

I wake to steady rain and think—no feel, deep inside—ohyes and thank you and please rain all day.  The light is dim, soft, quiet, my husband gone to work, the kids still sleeping.  It feels a coffee kind of morning and I take the French press from the cupboard, boil water in the kettle, measure grounds, pour, brew, wait, exhale.  

A few hours later the sun is shining, my wish for a rainy day ungranted.  Someone else must have wished for sunshine and needed it in a way that I did not need the rain, so I bow to their wish, welcome the sunshine, it’s a beautiful summer day.  The storms from the day before have cooled the air, the wind has pushed the humidity through, at least for now.  It’s hard to complain, so I don’t.

Words fill pages and pages of my journal every day this week.  Generally speaking, there are days that I fill half a page and am finished and, some days, the page remains blank as I am finished before I ever begin.  But this week, pages and pages of questions, possible answers which lead to new questions, a passage from a dear friend’s email, passages from books, gratitudes.  It is pages and pages of what it means (for me) to live, to wonder, to not-know.  It is pages and pages of a week, end of story.

I check on the garden and all is well, the tomatoes still green, the flowers still blooming, the weeds still spreading.  I think a thought about weeding, maybe this weekend-probably-we shall see, turn my attention to the moths and butterflies flitting from flower to flower, to the sunshine on my skin, to the breeze blowing strands of hair across my face.  I feel the life in this moment, in this garden, in this world. 

Later, I write in my journal about the little skipper perched on the pink zinnia, how I looked up and learned that skippers are an intermediate form between butterflies and moths, their head and stout body resembling that of a moth, their antennae clubbed like those of butterflies and, when at rest, holding their first pair of wings vertically as butterflies do.  This intermediary nature speaks to me, feels a kinship.  I see you, I feel you, little skipper, we are somewhere in between, wholly ourselves but pieces of this and that, holding traits that blur lines, that call for a blending, an acknowledging, a yielding.  I write three-quarters of a page, am finished, yield, end of story, for now.

When the Soul wants to experience something, she throws an image before her
and steps into her own experience.
~ Meister Eckhard ~