Saturday 5-2
It seems like everywhere I turn the talk is of fear; of fears we feel, of fears we reject, of fears we perceive or reject in others. I want to check in with myself and see whether I am making decisions based on fear, but I am still feeling solid that I am making decisions based on information and knowledge, especially inner knowing. I have plenty of fear coming at me on all sides, but the way I think of bravery is that it isn’t the absence of fear, but the willingness to engage with the depths of what is. I am grateful for the ability to revisit my own words a few fathoms back along the unbroken line I keep stringing along to not lose myself, and remember what I said early on about being able to live with the decisions I make now, and that metric still feels right for me. I am grateful for the clarity.
The purple and blue baby quilt on my lap, handmade by my Mom for my baby shower so many years ago now, has butterfly fabric all around the border. Another visual reminder of the internal knowing, the compass within.
I let lots of time go by in between bringing up with Quinn when he will come back. He still says he is staying there longer…. “for now.” The last time I said, “if that means I don’t see you until you’re fifteen that’s a little hard for me,” and he said, “I know.”
I am grateful for the two little yellow birds were flying around the bayou salmonberry patch and the hummingbird who visited and flew just about right up to us (we think he is the juvenile we watched getting fed). They might just be three little birds, but they remind me that every little thing is gonna be alright. That doesn’t mean it will be easy or that there won’t be fearful things. It means this too shall pass.
Sunday 5-3
First swallowtail butterfly spotted in the yard!!! Today I am grateful for a nice long talk with mom while I weeded the patch of yard by the honeysuckle. Beautiful sun. Light on things. Yellow birds in the bayou.
Monday 5-4
Today I am grateful for robin hatchlings! I was outside taking pictures of our blooming lilacs when one of the parent robins landed and I heard Peep! Peep! Peep! And there they were! Three little birds! An auspicious birthday – May the fourth be with them.
I had settled into my lawn chair a little while later with my camera and my laptop to multitask, and a parent bird landed with another worm. It eyed me, stuffed the worm down a throat, and then stared at me, hard. I stopped my camera clicking and sat very still. It leaned forward into the nest again, grabbed something, and flew off.
Oh no! Did it take one of the babies? Is it moving them because I’m here? Is it because of the neighbor’s brush pile burn? Are they moving their babies up wind? Is it the deer repellent Rich sprayed yesterday to stop the buttheads from eating my columbine blossoms?
I continued to watch, convinced it was me. I was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Mom came back with a worm. Three little birds strained to be fed first… wait, one wasn’t gone?
She fed, stared, left.
Dad. Three babies. Fed, stared, left.
They’re still here.
Next time mom came in, she pulled a black object that I could tell was smaller than a baby bird, maybe it was spit-up or poop, and she removed it from the nest when she left.
That must be what I saw.
This pandemic is a house of mirrors, making things seem one way and then another. Making me check whether my instincts are faulty, whether I am removing my child based on a false sense of danger. But no, the danger is not false, and the metric of being able to live with the decisions is still in play. Keep taking it one day at a time.
5-5
My purple asparagus crowns are starting to grow where they were hastily heeled in. I finally order the compost I need to build up the bed where they will be planted.
I am grateful for a beautiful day with lots of outside time, sweating as I weeded, moving my nursery area around (slug intervention). An evening walk and homemade pizza with sausage from the farm and a yummy stout aged in a whiskey barrel. In bed before 9.
Quinn doesn’t want the pressure of thinking he might carry covid from one house to the next. I wonder if he would feel a sense of relief of having the weight of deciding taken off his shoulders. If one of us got sick, the responsibility would not be on him. But that’s not really how I’ve parented him. He is aware of his own inner knowing. So aware that he cannot be distracted from it.
Wednesday 5-6
Today I am back on day 16 of the abundance meditations: today I will remember to be grateful.
My three yards of compost were delivered and I feel grateful for how working with soil helps me get grounded.
Quinn emailed me before bedtime to see if I want to do an extra one hour video call on mother’s day. The wording woke up some deeper fears. Rich researched what the plandemic video was all about. It was not a good time of day for me to overhear it, so I walked outside to check if my makeshift cover for the asparagus bed was still intact. I sat in the Adirondack chair in the gloaming. A chirping bird flew overhead, and as I looked up, I saw that it was chasing a much bigger bird, also flying over, but silently. An owl! It flew straight into our woods and landed. A shadow soaring silently through the shadows. Boy am I peering into the shadows right now. I felt like I was getting a grip today. Got some spreadsheet work done, listened to Brene and Sue Monk Kidd and Jen Hatmaker, and Glennon reading Untamed, planted asparagus, had chili in the crock pot and cornbread baked by the time Rich got home. The day started out with gratitude doodled in rainbow colors in my journal. But I cannot lie. It is ending with a gaping hole in my heart that I am not sure how to reckon with.
The moon came up over the ridge when Rich came outside to find me. He got to see one swoop of an owl through the trees as well, under the full super moon we didn’t even realize would be rising tonight.
Thursday 5-7
Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since I’ve had Quinn home.
Since I had said that thing about not seeing Quinn until he is fifteen, he talked about the concept of dividing that amount of time up into 2 or 4 or 8 chunks of time. I said, “fractions. You’re doing math to it.” A phrase Vi Hart uses is to “do math to it” or “do algebra/calculus to it”. He said, “I do math to it when I get nervous.”
His face. His precious face and the way his lip curved when he said that. Vulnerability. (Still so grateful for video calls.)
It is not resolved but I am not letting myself dwell on it. I am trying to focus on gratitude for how much integrity my kid has that he wants to prioritize long term goals like us all living past this pandemic, and how he is able to recognize that doing numbers is a defense mechanism… the awareness he has. It’s kind of blowing my mind.
Friday 5-8
The robin babies are gone, fledged already. I believe I miscalculated and they actually hatched earlier than the 4th. Now I am seriously empty nesting, bereft of my son and my robin nestlings as I head into mother’s day weekend. I thought I had more time with them. I don’t know why I thought that.
Today I will remember to be grateful for the time I’ve had.
i love you