Sunday, April 15, 2018

That Perfect Quiet

I keep noticing how much I am aware of quiet lately.  In silent moments reclining in my yard during my son's birthday party today, I sat in a cool breeze yet in the warm sun and just soaked it up.  I rented a video game truck for my son and sixteen of his closest friends to play in parked in front of my house, and while I got some fun photos and videos of the kiddos, and laughed at and with them here and there, I really enjoyed the decrescendos... the stillness away from the chaos... the quiet.  Who would have ever thought there would be quiet during a ten year old's birthday party?  But there was.  Even when they switched to nerf wars in the backyard after cake and ice cream.  I was still able to let them be the rambunctious kids they are and yet maintain my own peace.  I also enjoyed casually chatting with parents as they came to pick up their kiddos, and even reveled in some engaging deeper conversation with new parent-friends I'd not met before.  And yet, still I was able to embrace the calm in between.  Perhaps it's partly the age.  It's not fun, nor is it necessary, to micro-manage fourth graders.  So I didn't.  And the party was perfect.  And yet I was relaxed throughout.  I think I've also hosted enough kid birthday parties by now to not let anything stress me out about it.  This is the goal, I think.  Perhaps in almost everything.  To find pathways to peace despite the chaos life brings.  In a way, it's both an embracing of the chaos and a holding fast to peace all at once.  I think we all need both.  But I also think I've had so much chaos that it's time for embracing calm.  I just need it in my bones.  And my interfering mind is getting quieter and letting me actually have what I need instead of just doing all the things all the time.  When I step back and really acknowledge who I am and what I've been through in my forty-one years so far, I suppose it's no wonder I find myself drawn to the calm right now.  

And I also keep finding myself thoroughly enjoying pauses generally.  In the right places in conversations or between actions... reprieves from a generally busy life that is otherwise consuming.  The pauses are pregnant with so many thoughts and emotions and with such beautiful promise.  I cannot help but dwell in them. 

I think I'm so caught up in the silences right now, I don't have many words to share at the moment.  Which I can't help but acknowledge is odd for me, but I'm intent on embracing it because this is apparently what I need to do, who I need to be right now.  I'm just going to revel in this particular silent moment, on a fuzzy blanket, next to my kitties and let my mind go where it will.  It is in stillness that we know our true selves.  Our minds and spirits travel where they need to.  If we pay attention to where we go when it's effortless, that is where we find peace.  The North Star that guides each of us.  I think I've been so caught up for so very long in the what's-next-on-the-list vantage point of seeing the world that this just holding onto pauses, soaking in what's there, and flowing with moments as they come is just... so... refreshing.

And related to silence, somewhere floating between silence on one end of the spectrum and speaking and thinking on overload on the other... is listening.  I am normally such a talker.  And a writer.  As if you don't know that by now.  But I've entered a phase where I find myself listening more.  Absorbing more.  Letting things inform me.   And fill me.  And so I'm quietly processing underneath in my subconscious.  I'm sure more blog posts or scrawled-on journal pages or perhaps even novels will come pouring out of me again soon.  Because I know me.  But right now, I feel as though it's time for simmering.  Soaking in what comes to me.  Interpreting it all.  Inhaling it all.  Existing with as much presence as I can in each moment gifted to me.  It's ever important that we learn how we learn.  Learn how we grow.  Learn how we love.  Learn how we best listen.  And learn how to just sit with things and feel them.  So here I sit.  Absorbing.  A willing listener.   Open.  Feeling.  And knowing deep down that I'm undergoing something deeply different in this quiet shift in space and time for this normally verbose girl....



Monday, April 9, 2018

That Perfect Phoenix

My son asked me a question the other night before bed, which is my favorite bonding time with him each day, when we lounge on his bed and just have some time set aside to talk about whatever is on his mind.  His pivotal question of the evening was this:

"Which is cooler -- a dragon or a Phoenix?"

I was using his covered up legs as a pillow (a wiggly and giggly pillow at that), and I thought for a moment.  Hm.  My wheels started turning.  My Chinese zodiac is the dragon, so I immediately felt a little partial to answering dragon.  And I know his adorable girlfriend (oops, friend-girl) loves dragons, so I was clearly tempted to say dragon for that reason, too.  Plus I could tell and just knew that's what he wanted me to say.  And I always love to see him smile....

But... then I said, almost instinctively: "Phoenix."  Just blurted it out with certainty.  And then realized why after I'd answered.

He thought I answered wrong.

I sat quietly as he tried to convince me otherwise because of all the cool things dragons can do and how big and majestic they are... and they can both fly, but dragons are bigger....  You get the idea.  All the things an almost ten year old boy would rattle off about how cool dragons are.  And he then even told me about all the friends he has who picked dragon instead of Phoenix when he and his friends had been surveying each other about this at school earlier in the day. 

And I said "Nope."  I utterly don't care if I'm the only one who says Phoenix.  I've never cared if no one agrees with me... so numbers in opposition aren't going to sway me.  See, none of what a dragon can do matters compared to the extraordinary thing the Phoenix can do.  "A Phoenix can come back to life," I said.  "It can rise from the ashes."  And then I finished with this... "What's better than immortality?"  I asked him.

He didn't have a a good answer.  Dragons are fanciful and dominating creatures of lore.  They are fierce.  They are powerful.  But a Phoenix rises from its own ashes and becomes whole and perfect again.  Transforms.  Metamorphoses.  Into what it was always supposed to be.  After having been consumed by its own fire.  Turning to dust and ash and then rising and becoming majestic once again.

I'll pick that every... single... time.  That's pretty fucking magical and resonates with just about the most beautiful thing I can think of.  Consumption.  And then rising.  Becoming.  Renewal.  Being reborn from fiery dust to remake itself into a beautiful whole again.

I found a website just now discussing the Phoenix and its historical role in various cultures, and I just read this:

"In Chinese culture, a phoenix-like bird is known as 'fenghuang,' and is the sacred leader of all birds. Feng is male and huang is female, and thus the Chinese phoenix serves as a representation of balanced, integrated masculine and feminine energies.  It is considered to be symbolic of nobility, divinity, peace, prosperity, immortality, and the constant striving of the human spirit to transform and ascend."

That.  All of that.  I can swim in that forever.  I'm glad I chose the Phoenix.

Tuesday, April 3, 2018

That Perfect Floating

I feel like I just floated through the day today.  Not long after the kids left for school, at 7:45 a.m., I dialed into an 8:00 a.m. court hearing from home in my pajamas.  I warned folks I'd be working from home this morning and would be in after the hearing.  I expected it might last a couple of hours.  It lasted more than four, approaching four and a half.  When it was done, I slurped down a Nutri Bullet smoothie in a mad dash, quickly got dressed and did my make up, then zoomed to the office, arriving by a little before 1:00 p.m. (happily getting a decent parking spot since people were still out to lunch).  And from there, I hit the ground running (ha, so to speak... if you know me, you get that joke).  On a normal day, I might bill time to 3 or 4 clients, or if I'm lucky, I can focus more intently on just 1 or 2.  Today, it was more like 8 or 9 (I'd have to log in on my work computer to confirm, which I'm just not gonna do right now).  And each matter came alive and kicking, back and forth, so I had to jump from complicated matter to complicated matter all day long.  Until I finally left the office approaching 7:00 p.m., still in a whirl.  It was an insane day, but I also kinda loved it.

But, my God, the ride home.  It rained madly this afternoon (which I barely noticed out my window), but by the time I was driving, the rain had stopped.  And it was crazily windy, and my windows were down (of course they were... because wind, soothing everything and making my hair dance).  And I had ridiculously good and loud music coursing through me as I rode.  I don't think I could have mustered any words in that moment that weren't singing-along ones.  I was just... floating.  My body was... is so deeply tired.  I'm not even sure precisely what I'm trying to say here tonight... I'm just that exhausted to the core.  Except I feel like I'm still floating.  Maybe it's flying from hard thing to hard thing non-stop.  Maybe it's the wind.  Maybe it's the deep tired.  Maybe it's the afterglow of light I keep finding and just keeping inside me like treasure I hold dear.  I feel freer than I've felt in a long time.  I think Spring does that, too.  Especially windy Spring.  Tired, but floating.  So it isn't bad.  It's just an odd juxtaposition that feels kind of warm and tingly and also like I might fall over asleep any moment, but probably won't because my mind just won't stop.  I just keep riding, like a wave, floating along.  Knowing I'll just be carried where I'm supposed to be going.  Is it possible to hit a stride and float at the same time?  Because I kinda think that's what I'm doing.

I had this image in my head partway through the day of my hair being on fire it was just so non-stop... and speaking of hair....

I had lunch with my sister in law recently, and she said in passing we should talk about my hair (but we never got back to that subject).  She's a hairdresser these days.  But I kinda don't want to talk about doing anything different to my hair.  So, all I said in return was, "It's curling really well today, isn't it?"  Because it was.  I love that it's a mane again.  I stupidly cut it shorter after my son was born.  Never doing that again.  It's longer than it's been in many years, and it's a wee bit unruly, but also in a good place because I finally found hair products that I really love.  God, it took long enough.  And I don't even own a brush because just NO.  Conditioning is key with curls.  Like tons of conditioners.  Anyway, I do get compliments on my hair, but I don't even care.  Even if I didn't... wouldn't matter to me.  It's sort of a trademark for me.  Maybe it's also a trademark or a sign of this chapter in my life.  And I love when it's big and crazy (but not in that Big Texas Hair kind of way... you know the difference).  Maybe my sister in law was talking about my gray hairs.  There's plenty more of them cropping up.  But I don't care about that either.  Kinda like my surgical scars or pregnancy stretch marks.  Or teeny wrinkles on my nose from scrunching it up when I'm laughing.  All those little things that show the life this body has lived so far.  And that are there to be seen unabashedly in the life I have yet to live.  And with the work and the trials in my life to come, I'm sure more gray hairs will sprout.  And more scars ultimately, just because it's probable.  But there will also be lots more laugh lines.  And all the things that make life worth it.  And maybe they're all beautiful in their imperfect way.  And maybe my crazy hair is just another way of floating.  Not trying too hard.  Just being... well, me. 

So right now, I'm floating.  On the wind.  On a song.  And in a dream.  Don't care where.  Don't care how messy my hair gets.  Seeing where things go and diving deep in every moment.  With intention all the while... but still floating.