view

We hike along the Potomac River, my son and I bringing his sister back to the hike we did some weeks ago, the view wild and wintry.  The water seems extra green on this day and reminds me of the green of Lake Austin, except here there are rapids and cliffs, and instead of gazing at liquid green with three beautiful friends on a mild Texan afternoon, I’m gazing at liquid green with my beautiful kids (who are hardly kids but will always be kids to me) on a brisk Virginia morning.  Aside from the green tourmaline river, the palette of this day is muted, though if wind could be a color, the day's palette includes the color of jasmine or maybe butter or maybe love. 

We try to view a comet on a frigid night with a full moon hanging in the sky.  The moon is glorious but her brightness makes finding the comet difficult.  My son fidgets with the telescope, head tipped back, gazing directly overhead where the comet is supposed to be.  My husband takes a turn to search, and since we don’t need four people peering through one eyepiece, my daughter and I step inside to warm ourselves, she lies on the furry carpet, I sit on the piano bench, attempt to play Liszt and Schubert, my fingers stiff from the cold and lack of practice.  We never do find the comet, though my son quietly tries again around three in the morning. Some things are simply hidden from view.

One day we make waffles for lunch.  We top them with freshly whipped cream, my daughter drops sliced strawberries on top of her cream, my son sprinkles mini chocolate chips on top of his, I opt for both.  It’s not a typical lunch but it’s a delicious lunch and I vow to make this lunch again.  One of my greatest joys of motherhood (helped by the fact that we homeschooled) is the great quantity of lunches I’ve enjoyed with my kids over the years.  Few lunches involved whipped cream but the three of us sitting together, well, it doesn’t get more delicious than that. For as long as I can (and, oh, the tides are changing), I want lunch with these two.

I have this sense of being pulled in different directions, a tangent or corollary to my endy-ness of last week, though separate and other.  I’m interested in, tempted and distracted by, a thousand-and-one things, some of which I could do as a job or as a side hustle, or just because which is equally valid.  I begin to think of myself as a magpie, assessing options with a bird’s eye view, gathering-collecting-assembling, which is a fine way of doing and being, except there’s this little whisper, gentle and persistent: the writing, the writing, the writing.  I’m writing, I am.  There’s this piece, for instance, and there are online offerings, also freelance work.  And teaching yoga doesn’t involve writing per se, but I write notes, things I want to share, things for all of us to think about, my students as well as me, because teachers are learners too.  Gloria Steinem said: We teach what we need to learn.  I’ve a lot to learn.  And do you see how I started in one place and have arrived somewhere different?  It’s that ziplining to somewhere truer (hat tip to Mary Karr).

And if I’m to zipline somewhere truer, let me zip now to the response of a student and friend on last week’s piece, dear H.  The idea of yarn ends, already part of some knitted fabric and not really loose, but ends that nonetheless need a little tending and tucking in.  How much more beautiful, how much more tender, how much truer, could life be?  Hello, little ends, I see you, I’ve got you in my view, I fold you now into the rest of me.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
Neither need you do anything but be yourself.
~ Lao Tzu ~

P.S. My FREE five-day journaling series Letting Go, Calling In is available through February.  Go here for details and to receive this offering, from me to you. (and a p.s. to the P.S. you don’t have to be a journaler to do this… just curious and open to reflection.)