Sitting On a Porch Swing

Great-grandson Damian, born June 12, 2006, 

with his buddy Lukey

There is a woman sitting on a porch swing.
She is rocking
to ease
the hard little kernel of pain
she has always carried
under her valiant smile,
the strain of sadness underlying
the positive talk,
the unrelenting hope,
the dismayed recognition
at the way it has all turned out
so far from the once upon a time visions
of long ago,
for so long dreaming one day it would all be
so much better.

She is rocking upon the tide of all those dreams:
the one she made come true -
the ten years out of sixty when she lived her own life-
and the ones she finally gave up on
She is rocking upon the tide of What Is
having long ago learned to find happiness
within its framework.

She is rocking under a blue sky
full of birdsong, squirrel chatter
and the call of the raven
She is rocking under
lowering storm clouds
of smokey gray,
thunder rumbling,
splitting across the sky,
the fresh scent of rain as it splatters
against the tin roof.
She is rocking under the night sky,
and star dreaming
She is rocking under the
full round grandmother moon
and is feeling the presence of crones
on the night-time air:
strong resolute women who do
what is put before them
because no one else will
and there is no choice
when someone has to
feed the children

She is rocking her way
to the end of her life
letting go of the past,
letting go of all fractious and
inharmonious bodies,
distancing herself from all the
crisis and clamour and youthful drama
her age has no energy for,
gathering her limited energy, conserving,
for the needs of the present day,
letting go of the dreams once dreamed
and the years that cannot come again,
leting go of Home and making a home where she is,
trying to be grateful for struggle
Because It Could Always Be Worse,
(and often is!)

She is trying to cling to the vanishing life that is hers
under the claims and demands that would gobble it all
and then burp unperturbed at its ending
having eaten its fill.

She is longing for long white empty beaches
and the roar of the waves,
the cry of the gulls, the eagle soaring wind-swept skies,
the picky-toeing progress of the blue heron,
serene at the inlet's edge
and no humans anywhere within sight or hearing
but her.
She is longing for her last years to be her own
something of her own choosing
having only chosen once - maybe twice -
in her entire life of responsibility
for herself
All the rest was for others,
the pitfall of those who take seriously
the role of mother.

While rocking, she achieves the state of No Thought,
that Nirvana the sages and mystics seek through practice
is effortless for her
for she is too exhausted to think
Inner peace disguised as exhaustion
or vice versa
She rocks and thoughts flit
like the little birds in the hedgerow
and fly fast away
She rocks and promises herself
that one day at a time
is all she has to manage
The rest will take care of itself
She prays for relief
that some of the burdens be lifted
But she doesnt believe enough
they ever will

One day she will rise wraith-like
from all the burdens that claim her
and will fly to a farther shore.
She would rather stay here
for she really likes the scenery
on planet earth
But she likes it best without people
all their egoes and clamour
and inflated self-worth

On her porch swing she mutters oaths and incantations:
sometimes "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" when she remembers
something incredibly oafish she once said
sometimes "Shift....shift.....shift....." as she tries to add
her small push to the collective consciousness

Somewhere monks bow to the tone of a fulsome bell
Somewhere nomads hunger for food and justice
Somewhere ignorant armies clash and thunder
Somewhere butterflies follow their migration of pure wonder
Somewhere a whale gives a mighty blow,
then dives, then breaches
and always always always
her heart trods
those long and empty beaches
On her porch swing she is with them all,
all but the fighting.
She has no fight in her,
her striving is for surviving

Today her first great grandchild has come to planet earth
and all the hope she has blesses this birth.

One from the archives, kids,
linked to Real Toads for Open Link Monday

Wild Woman Looks Back

Wild Woman

looks back :

some regret,

mostly gratitude,
nostalgia

and one

long

wistful

sigh.

THE GONG OF TIME

[Note: this is written entirely tongue in cheek, intended as humor - I hope no one is offended:)]

The gong of time rings with a resounding thunk at the moment one looks back on all the years, realizing with a sudden shock how, the last ten years having zipped by in a nanosecond, the years stretching ahead are ominously few. After sixty, one thinks (or tries not to think) of best and worst case scenarios: ten to fifteen years no longer stretches ahead lazily, but looms as a finite entity which must not be squandered.

One tricks oneself into moving through lazy self-directed days, one still wastes whole chunks of time, hours, days, even weeks. There is still next week, next month, next year to clean out the detritus in the cupboards, write the book of one's life, make out a will, tell everyone in your life what they mean to you. Until there isnt.

After sixty, the sense of infinite possibility changes. Once one envisioned white knights who may yet arrive. Now the probable scenario switches to handy-dart drivers, meals on wheels, even hearse drivers who may pull up to one's door unexpectedly. Why unexpected? Why is it that each of us knows that everyone dies, but continues to believe it will always be Somebody Else? Possibilities now include knee replacement and orthotics, the challenge of living on too little money, and the stunning dental lottery by which one races one's teeth to the Final Demise.

One has long since stopped clicking through the leering hairy photos on match.com. Who needs a grizzled bad-tempered wart-encrusted lothario with wandering eyes and expensive tobacco habits cluttering up one's living space? The lifelong pursuit of peace is attained and re-embraced with every bout of solitude, finally underlining that this is my chosen and preferred state, reclaimed after each relinquishment with stronger fervor.

The time factor begins to press urgently when someone who started one's life fully expecting to have books published has been so busy raising children, that she has written only one, as the second and perhaps the most definitive clamors insistently. The time is now to tell my story, proof against my children's claims that they had the most traumatic childhoods on the planet. Yes, even worse than Rwandan children, or those raised in caves in Afghanistan! I remember all those years, all the laughter, all I put into it - my life's blood, a trend that continues into my declining years, head bloody but unbowed. I shall write it down, all I remember, hoping at least one of my offspring will read it:)

Declining years - somehow when I look back at the trajectory of this path I bumbled upon, I see an ascent, rather than a descent. Flailing and wretched, I stumbled by fate and fortune onto some magical turnings, and grew with every decade deeper into myself and the journey. If this be close to the pinnacle, it might give one pause to take stock: the fatigue of shoring up other peoples' journeys; limbs showing the wear and tear of all the self-flogging required to assume a load big enough for two or three, toppling about precariously on my shoulders; days when I can barely stagger about with yelps of pain; finances best not even mentioned; in need of help, after all the helping, and a future that promises no ease of these difficulties.

BUT! The riches! Having raised those children alone with all ofthe energy and heart I could summon. Being a loved and appreciated grandma and now a great-grandma. The coffeehouse years that showed me Another Way. Having made one of the strongest dreams of my life come true in my move to the ocean. Ten glorious years immersed in the wonders of nature, in a community of kindred spirits. Having come home fully to myself, being okay with who I am and the life I have lived. Loving my little trailer, my books and music, my furry companions and the peacefulness of my life, waking up each day to a day that is my own, at last, at LAST!

I heard the gong clearly when my mother died, in that passage conferring the mantle of family matriarch on me. With her passing, there was no longer a buffer between me and my own mortality. Her presence had kept me young, still someone's child. With her death in 1994, perforce I became a grownup.

I see in the younger generation the self-absorption of the young, the youthful unawareness of just how mortal I am, just how finite my years. They think they have lots of time to work out the issues and the anger. They dont know that their perception of the years I gave my heart and soul to rewrites history in a way that erases my life, removes all the joy and striving, all the effort, that I put into our lives together.

The gong reverberates inside more frequently; the press of time ahead being extremely finite, is still there. Yet human nature is such that one wakes to the promise of a new day as if one always will. Unable or unwilling to grasp the reality, even as one sits by the deathbeds of others, that one morning will dawn without one being present to witness it.

In response to death, one can only live, as fully and consciously as one can, appreciating the gifts and the glory, the way a new bud unfurls under the first warmth of spring, or a newborn opens its eyes on a world tinged with wonder.

Walking with my sister and the dogs the other night, after my son had once again unthinkingly flattened me by a careless comment that erased his entire childhood, I moaned, "It's going to be horrible having to go through my Life Review at the end of my life. It's been hard enough living through it once!"

My sister smiled. "I'm sure when St Peter sees you, he'll just say 'dont even bother' and wave you right in," and we both cackled hopelessly.