We know what we are driving toward, but not precisely where we are going. The sirens begin. We turn the corner, the lights echo off the leaves illuminating the street, but not the beautiful type of illumination from the western sun. Yet, I fear there could be a last setting sun.
You came to me earlier that evening asking to talk. When a mother hears these words, thoughts whip through the mind, thoughts travel from the heart throughout the limbs while the mind twists and turns.
We sit as we have before as you share your heart and determination to take action. You know action needs to be put in place. But what is the action, you ask? The time is now, not tomorrow; you say as the urgency begins to make its way onto your face. I know you are holding back, not allowing your cranial nerves to take over, but soon they will activate. All nerves in the face and throughout the body will engage as mine stay still. As I type this, I wonder which is best, which serves us and others. I only know what the stillness feels like.
You yell. I stop. You run. You scream. I run, but in stillness while watching you, worried yes, but fascinated at your ability to be as is. I start to worry, hearing your guttural cries, your screams, you calling her name, but most of all, I hear, “No!…No!…No!” I worry as I don’t want you to witness what we all fear could be the outcome.
Your body responds. Your voice coming from the earth up and out and beyond. Your entire body breathes. Despite feeling like you might go into an attack, you stay with your body and calm it down. I watch it all. I watch you cry and hug her. I see the questions running through your head as to how this came about. I see you let your anger out. It’s not entirely displaced as she needs to hear it, but you demand accountability, as someone who loves should protect, not allow risk.
I stand and console. I gather the bits and pieces of information. I scan the area to see where my attention needs to land—the checklist of things. My mind and body, the sponge, taking it in, calling to the subconscious for the next right step. The next right step, habit or unconscious choice, or both, does not include emotions entering the equation.
After almost 50 years of my rooting into the earth, twisting and turning, growing and shedding, reaching and protecting, waiting through the seasons, and networking throughout the soil, I know the rings within tell the stories of the years. For the first 40 years, I was an Ironwood without room for personal feelings and emotions to have space, as when something is dense, so compacted in its fiber, where is the room? Living alongside you allows me to witness my DNA. You have the capacity to hold space for self and others. In my body, for way too long, the space has been there for others, but missing for me.
You, my daughter, your rings I know will be different. I’m not sure how they will appear and look compared to mine, but I know they will have less trapped bits of emotional flare. You let it all out. I admire this and sometimes feel jealous of the freedom you allow yourself. When I was your age, I didn’t have the space to be rooted in my emotions. You, I see as a Balsa. There are spaces for water to move into, but to also be released. As I often say, there’s a balance to life, to living. Strive to live from a win-win perspective. At the core of it all, flexibility is key—flexibility in mind, thought and emotion.
As Ani DiFranco says,
“Buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that’s what it takes
All that steel and stone
is no match for the air, my friend
what doesn’t bend breaks
what doesn’t bend breaks”
Through you, my 16-year-old Mo, I witness the bending and flexibility of feelings moving. I admire you.
Rise & Shine
Rise and Shine Girl Blog 