I'm sitting in the comfy chair in my living room, just having finished an impromptu peanut butter desert concoction, the house is a mess but its quiet, and the only thing I can hear is the rain. For the first time since last summer I'm enjoying the rain. For the first time since last summer it feels like the rain is washing me clean rather than beating me down. This has been a hard spring. A really hard spring. The trees didn't fully leaf out until the first week of June, the lilacs didn't bud until then either; it rained almost every day from April 1-June 1, and never before have I been so filled with self doubt, lack of direction and loneliness. Why did we move here? Why would we leave the friends we had? We were supposed to have more time, more money, more passion, more meaning in our lives here. But we don't. And worse yet, I have nothing to give to make it happen. It feels as though we sacrificed a whole lot of good for a whole lot of potential great, and in order to instill a sense of stability into the transition we have sacrificed all that potential great for a whole lot of mediocre.
Just in the last week or two does it feel like there might be some life in my blood, some semblance of passion and self still circulating deep under the surface. The rain that I hear right now is wafting the smell of flowers and the sounds of birds in through my open screen door and the finally leafed out trees could not possibly be any greener. They, like me, are for some reason grateful for this rain even though it is far from a novelty.
A week or so ago John and Maggie and I were outside by our raised beds, looking at our tomatoes and greens. Maggie had brought a plate of moistened been seeds out to plant and one by one she would hold up a seed and wait for direction on where the bury it. John would make a small hole for each seed and have her drop it in and bury it. I was simply an onlooker. As I watched this meticulous process, I was overcome with a feeling of success. Last year we tilled up four plots of land, planted in three, watered two, and weeded one. We lost a ton to poor soil prep, poor nutrition management, and general neglect, and felt pretty grim about it all. This year, we turned over the soil in two beds and built two small raised beds, so far have planted in both raised beds and one plot...just a few things. But to stand and watch my husband and my daughter dig in the dirt, put seeds in the ground, and do it while truly engaged in each other's company....that nearly leveled me with joy, this is what it feels like to be doing it right.
Since that moment I have been in a gradual process of unfolding. Unfolding my arms, unfurrowing my brow, unclenching my jaw, unfolding my expectations. We have been time and again dreaming of diving into something with both feet, producing at least an impressive harvest if not lifestyle, and assuming that the balance of passion and life will just flow. But to truly find that balance we have had to scale back to what seems like miniscule visions. And yet, in that moment I felt that our miniscule vision fed every need in my body and fueled the fire to grow.
I have spent eight months in nothing shy of a panic attack, wondering how we are going to manage bringing another baby into our lives. Finally, in the last week I have let myself rest in the idea that it doesn't matter how we will manage, but only that we will. Because its events like this that ask you to stop and truly evaluate what you care about, what will read as your favorite chapters when you look back at the story you wrote. And just as I realized that it is not the plants or the dirt or the vision that will get us where we want to be, but the ability to keep it at a level where we can remain truly engaged with one another, the same will go for this new and wholly unknown adventure.
So today, I'm going to sit, in the comfy chair in the living room, adamantly ignoring my long and growing to do list, and let the rain wash me clean.
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