Day 36 - The Walk

It is 8AM. I'm wearing my short gray running shorts and Harvard sweatshirt. I've got my iPod earphones securely in my ears as I head out the door. It is a clear blue sky morning, crisp - I feel fall in the air and it makes me happy AND sad. I turn the corner and head east, toward the cemetery. 100 Years comes on the iPod and I have to start deep breathing when I hear "I'm 63 for a moment..." and I think of Mom, and of reading her 1977 diary, when she was 54 years old. There are so many similarities between my mother and me, among them being our propensities for feeling overwhelmed with clutter, having lower back pain when we're stressed out, and alternately feeling overly responsible yet loving to stay busy. I don't know how she did it, as I read her daily schedule: grocery shopping, speaking at PEO, the construction worker consultation, my basketball game. Every day is like that - a blend of community, family, and a little personal.

I think of all this as I keep walking, and tears start forming. I don't care anymore - feeling these tears, so I let them fall until I can't see, then swipe my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt and keep walking. I look down at my iPod and find "Learning the Hard Way" by the Gin Blossoms. This should've given me a clue as to what was to come, but I was totally blown away when I heard my OWN voice speaking to me. I decided to listen to what I had to say (that's a relatively rare thing), and it was a 4 minute piece somehow mysteriously plucked out of the middle of one of my 30 minute channels I do for my Next Step empowerment groups. I was talking about entering into this new world that requires trust because we're somewhere we've never been before. We used to bash our heads against brick walls because we were in a limited state, but our best bet is just to gently walk around the walls so we can keep going. We have one foot on dry land, one foot on the boat, and that Spirit Boat has set sail. If we don't have the faith to let the old go, we'll keep feeling split.

Trust has been coming up a LOT for me lately, so now, while I'm walking past Lindenwood, it's the perfect time to look at it. I feel my shoulders tight, still torqued from my stairs fall last week, but I'm not worried. I've cycled through too many of these things to do much more than just acknowledge each state, if I even need to do that. Suddenly I saw this whole transformation process like slow-starting waves, undulating up and down, gently at first so we can get used to the new rhythm. Now they start to pick up in intensity and frequency, and we may get scared, but it's the same rhythm, just faster and harder. So we are prepared to keep riding these ascension waves, we can TRUST. So I see that I DO trust, even if I don't always SEE or KNOW; I DO know, or rather, some part of me knows, and that's enough for me.

I round the corner, right by the house that has the incredibly soft, lush green lawn, and head west again. Shakira tells me hips don't lie, so I do the obligatory shoulder shimmy and hip shake, just a little, while I keep walking. This is my walk, my 4 mile walk that is for me alone. A time to feel the air in and out of my lungs. A time to take deep deep breaths, to feel my chest expand, to take in the sky and the trees and the sidewalk. A time to just clear my head (well, you know - relatively clear it) and just be in my body. I continue for another uneventful mile, but as I head north toward the cemetery and our block again, I look over and see a red truck, a man standing in front of a fresh grave. At first I think he's taking a picture, because his hands are in front of his face, then I see that he's praying, his head bent. He's standing perfectly still. The grave looks fresh, but I don't want to keep staring, so I turn forward again. Mom's going to be buried in Bismarck, so I won't have a cemetery to go to, I won't have that close gravestone to pray before, so I think I'll create a shrine out in my backyard for Mom. I'll plant some of her favorite plants - some irises, bleeding hearts, coleus. Maybe get a bench so that I can sit and just be there with her. It's nicer in our backyard anyway.

I look down and see another dragonfly perched on the sidewalk. "Don't forget it - this is all an illusion," I remind myself, laughing a little as I continue north, continue home.