First Chill and Frost - November 2004
So many changes now. As if life weren’t only about our adaptability and response to change, our feeling about change, our seeking out and thriving under change.
New employment for Tata, new life lurking and growing in my belly, and my daughter’s language has just exploded into solar systems and galaxies. She now sings entire songs from memory and makes up her own lyrics. She also makes up words and phrases with nonsense syllables and sounds. It cracks us both up when she substitutes a familiar, expected word with something like “bahhhhlths!” At almost-three, she is a witty chronicler of her own history, of our life.
These changes still come from my body. It is a myth that children only come from our bodies once. As they grow our bodies accommodate their changes: sleep, hugs, boundaries, playgrounds - the constant bridge to their consciousness and conscience. With my daughter’s changes and cognitive development have come her need for more of my body - more nursing requests, sleeping with her, napping with her, feeding her. Necessarily my time in the woods is now less frequent. I do suffer, and appreciate any moment when I can move outside. Like the worried squirrels, I adapt when faced with harsh conditions and put away what I can, knowing the hard winter will eventually change to thaw.
Last week, on the brink of my first positive home pregnancy test, feeling depleted without much time alone, I walk again in my favorite county park. Just now the temperature has turned chilly. Just now, the frost lingers in the morning. Fall has really graced us this year and I love it. This transition was gentle and sweet, full of color and time. I can take it into my body without exception, this autumn, and return it to the earth changed, inside.
Most walkers come to this park with their big, bouncing dogs. I love the dogs, and greet their people. Merely seeking dog exercise, these folks regularly avoid my favorite part of the park: the very narrow path between the cattail-thick lake and the duck pond. In the summer this path is crowded with insects, tall weeds and bushes, and the walker’s legs must push aside the grasses and ivy in order to get through. Earlier this fall, when I first approached after months of absence, it is illogically intimidating, and after a moment of hesitation I walk anyway. I am hit with the impression of the path as doorway, as the way to enter the park I need. Too far from the parking lot, most hikers never explore this part. By the tracks on the ground I know that deer and a few hardy folks like myself, seeking contemplation under bushy trees and piney woods, have passed here at all. Few come here at all, and none see me today. It is quiet.
Today under this mostly leafless path, in the afternoon, frost greets my boots in the shady pathway under the tall pines. Without hanging on plants or water, it simply lies on top of the soil, on the blades of doomed, still-green grass. I am stopped by this change, the first real harbinger of cold hard winter coming, coming soon. The days will be filled with frost and freezing breath and snow. It will come that the fox tracks and deer prints cross mine, lead away and toward my endless loop around the trails. Hard change is upon me, and now I know, I must prepare.
Resignation and submission take me and I think: Land, please take my changes as lightly as this frost. Let them lay on me as effortlessly as this, as inevitably as this, as gracefully. Meet my feet from below and I will protect you as gently as my own flesh and blood. My commitment, my walk, my body, the pulse of winter freezing the living, changing life to begin again with the peeping frogs and tantalizing hints of spring thaw. I think: this is what grace must feel like, to the ones who pray for a light step in the coldest of ground.
*copyright Kim Blue 2005
New employment for Tata, new life lurking and growing in my belly, and my daughter’s language has just exploded into solar systems and galaxies. She now sings entire songs from memory and makes up her own lyrics. She also makes up words and phrases with nonsense syllables and sounds. It cracks us both up when she substitutes a familiar, expected word with something like “bahhhhlths!” At almost-three, she is a witty chronicler of her own history, of our life.
These changes still come from my body. It is a myth that children only come from our bodies once. As they grow our bodies accommodate their changes: sleep, hugs, boundaries, playgrounds - the constant bridge to their consciousness and conscience. With my daughter’s changes and cognitive development have come her need for more of my body - more nursing requests, sleeping with her, napping with her, feeding her. Necessarily my time in the woods is now less frequent. I do suffer, and appreciate any moment when I can move outside. Like the worried squirrels, I adapt when faced with harsh conditions and put away what I can, knowing the hard winter will eventually change to thaw.
Last week, on the brink of my first positive home pregnancy test, feeling depleted without much time alone, I walk again in my favorite county park. Just now the temperature has turned chilly. Just now, the frost lingers in the morning. Fall has really graced us this year and I love it. This transition was gentle and sweet, full of color and time. I can take it into my body without exception, this autumn, and return it to the earth changed, inside.
Most walkers come to this park with their big, bouncing dogs. I love the dogs, and greet their people. Merely seeking dog exercise, these folks regularly avoid my favorite part of the park: the very narrow path between the cattail-thick lake and the duck pond. In the summer this path is crowded with insects, tall weeds and bushes, and the walker’s legs must push aside the grasses and ivy in order to get through. Earlier this fall, when I first approached after months of absence, it is illogically intimidating, and after a moment of hesitation I walk anyway. I am hit with the impression of the path as doorway, as the way to enter the park I need. Too far from the parking lot, most hikers never explore this part. By the tracks on the ground I know that deer and a few hardy folks like myself, seeking contemplation under bushy trees and piney woods, have passed here at all. Few come here at all, and none see me today. It is quiet.
Today under this mostly leafless path, in the afternoon, frost greets my boots in the shady pathway under the tall pines. Without hanging on plants or water, it simply lies on top of the soil, on the blades of doomed, still-green grass. I am stopped by this change, the first real harbinger of cold hard winter coming, coming soon. The days will be filled with frost and freezing breath and snow. It will come that the fox tracks and deer prints cross mine, lead away and toward my endless loop around the trails. Hard change is upon me, and now I know, I must prepare.
Resignation and submission take me and I think: Land, please take my changes as lightly as this frost. Let them lay on me as effortlessly as this, as inevitably as this, as gracefully. Meet my feet from below and I will protect you as gently as my own flesh and blood. My commitment, my walk, my body, the pulse of winter freezing the living, changing life to begin again with the peeping frogs and tantalizing hints of spring thaw. I think: this is what grace must feel like, to the ones who pray for a light step in the coldest of ground.
*copyright Kim Blue 2005
posted by Skim @ 2:56 PM
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