Saturday, May 20, 2017

“Mmm.” Giggled.  “Mmm..” I giggled again, muffling my noises into the crevices of tree roots which I called ‘home’.  No mornings shocked me awake. No mornings kicked at me or startled me or threatened me.  No, the morning sky teased my eyes to open with the softest morning lullaby of its own; a prayer as soft as the turning of woolen summer blankets, turning from deepest to softest light.

 I rolled my hips over, to pull my body away from its nuzzling safety.  My lips needed their morning kiss of sunrise warmth.  I scooted in the dirt to prop my shoulders between the arms of the rooted tree.  My face I could lay and my cheek I could rest upon the scratchy hide of bark, between trunk and root, those toughened spots which were the tree’s since its sapling days, those spots which stood through winds and barricaded against the banking of winters’ snows.

I watched the sun stretch its light into the sky with the boldness of duty and assurance of necessity, but not of its own design or decision.  It was the sun. Each day and every day. With each stretch of the sun’s light, my cheeks would flush and sweat would gather on the nape of my neck.  Yet I never moved.  I flung my thigh over the tree’s exposed root to share the morning’s heat. And in the toughest, weathered trunk spot, in the spot where roots hold unto the body, there I lay in sweated heat of morning and the safety of nature’s most immovable.

I slept through the morning, into midday when the songs of birds intensified from the welcoming of daylight and first feedings of the day to the confrontations of territories and chattering of flirtations. 

My body urged me to stand, to stretch, to feel its own weight.  The stiffness of sleeping muscles begged now to be woken.

………………………..

I could barely face the reality of what I was going through.  I could not write the words I needed to see nor the words I needed to use.  I would write in my mind because I could not write it, not truthfully.  Many weeks of many days passed into the dedicated simplicity of months into years.  Those minutes were dreaded, I am ashamed to admit.  How precious each moment alive really is, but I fought each moment of sameness, of nothingness.

The nothingness wrote into a journal all its own.  I realized it did not matter to the world, whether I slept or not.  It did not matter and I did not matter.  And the more I did not matter the more I wished not too.  Loneliness evolved into a blessed aloneness.

I don’t know about any of that except that to follow my gut instincts meant something quite different than I ever imagined, if I was to seriously pursue my life.  I became aware that even with the paths of those I admired, I still could not borrow their path.  At best, their experiences were references and their existence were promises all their own.  But to find my path meant finding my own.

It meant my acceptance and my ownership of who I was, who I imagine myself to be and who I am.

Psst…(That is all a bit of ‘poppycock’. )

I realized I had been given a gift….I have been given my life.

…………….

When the rains came, I tucked myself beneath the tree’s roots, into the sand warmed by the growth it held.  I dreamed of tropical currents scooping me into whirlpools of lighted warmth as I drifted further from all I had known.  Within those currents my mind would float, safe and soft among the birth of lapping waves.

No matter the weather I would walk each day not admitting to myself that I was searching for reasons or yearning to find a path which I could follow.  I had ventured this far and still I was looking.  The minutes of not finding grew into hours of not finding which grew into months. 

I grew grateful for time and failure.  I finally listened to time’s lesson.  I finally stopped looking.  I no longer poked at my memories of the forest’s deceptions and the open savagery of the field.

I started wandering.  I found pieces of paths from travelers – portions of journeys which were marked by breathtaking views of the river or the bubbling of springs which fed the river.

I stopped pitying myself over what others had done to me.

I started to appreciate what I had overcome.

……………………………………

I walked hours to the river, to a spot hidden on its banks but marked only by the slight smoothing of paths woven into the surrounding brush.  I would lie upon the polished river boulders to smell summer sun opening blossoms and heating sands and rocks.  I reached my fingers to feel the water, interrupting the gentle swirls of current.

I was finger to finger with the water and face to face with someone I had not looked at for months.

Startled we stared with equal curiosity.  Her deep blue eyes reached out with a kindly sadness not wishing to be interrupted, but smiled nonetheless.  Not stern and not wild, but with a character flaw which wished for dosages of both.

I smiled to her as she to me.

“Es.”  We both jumped back at the sound of our forgotten voice.

“Es. It is time to tell your story.”

May you always walk in love,

Stephanie

#thebrickdandelion