After falling into my chair, I slouch down smiling as I lean back listening to the rain that just started to fall as if on que. After such a productive morning it is delightful to slow down and enjoy this moment. Thinking of all this past week brought into my life, and where it will undoubtably take me. My mind is in awe of all that impacted me. Now, deciphering how to implement and forge on with all I have been given. As anyone else, my life can become a blur if not careful. As Summer is rapidly fleeting, I can feel my body tense up at the thoughts of letting it go. Yet, I steer my emotions to the delightful nuance of all that is yet to come. I find myself in that moment of an awakening. These gifted times of life that seem so momentous. You feel the sadness of leaving the familiar and embark on the unknown. These usually occur at Birthdays, New Years, new jobs, and milestone moments. However, they happen too during the moments of "just life." At any age, the unknown can be quite frightening. I have been stopped in my tracks this Summer for certain with my own Daughter. As if she turned a corner, she has changed in so many ways. Fear sets in like a mighty river and I liken it to me standing on the shore watching the waters race downward. Over the boulders and branches, the noise is deafening as the intensity is fierce. The temperature is distinctly different and I wonder what it must be like to be that delicate, beautiful flower that dropped off that branch and swirls and dances its way down. Bobbing over sticks and being pulled by the undertow like it was quickly sucked under, I gasp. Smiling as all my muscles relax, I am pleasantly surprised only to find it happily bouncing further down. I am lost in fascination.
Without hesitation I am traveling down the river bank unaware of anything around me but my fixation is intensely locked on that traveling flower. I imagine it being a perfumed pungent Elderflower for it's meaning symbolizes zeal. My mind flashes back to vacationing when my Daughter was young. We had a little running brook beside where we stayed and one of the highlights from that trip of memories were of her and random objects she might find. She found a stick, a leaf, her favorite though was a bottle top. She would set it in that lively brook at various points and watch it flow down. Watching it bump against rocks and such. Remembering her captivated, enthralled and truly enchanted as it would swirl around and around seemingly stuck at times. That white hair, blue eyes and her squatted down beside it. She would comment and squeal. I remember there being a drop off and it kept her marveling at it's journey. There was a sitting area at the base, where the water stopped into something like a little pool. At night we would sit around the campfire, snuggled under blankets, telling stories and yes, speaking of the journey on that little water fall. The noise of the water filled our beings with such fervency I still feel it today. Jerry Garcia was quoted, "Listen to the River sing sweet songs to Rock my Soul."
My mind goes to another vacation with my Daughter and we again are on the water. It was a rapids this time that we were on. Sitting in our innertubes just floating along giggling and soaking up the sun. We were rounding the corner and my knuckles were clinching tighter turning shades of white. Holding to my tube as if somehow magically I am aiding her in holding on. The water would come racing in to push your tube. Oh, it was exhillerating and fearful all in the same moments. My Daughter was younger; so all my attention was on her. The waters forged her nervously onward ahead. Instantly, she was airborne and alas I saw my beautiful girl go sideways and flip over. I was paralized with fear. For what seemed like a lifetime and yet only moments later that white haired love wonder came bouncing up out of the moving waters waving both hands in the air yelling "I'm okay!! I'm okay!!" John O'Donohue said and I wholeheartedly agree, "I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of it's own unfolding." I see myself sitting at the river bank sipping on St Germain, an elderflower liqueur. Perhaps fitting a Left Bank Martini Cocktail and I get lost in the waters. I think of the movie "A River Runs Through It" and I lift my glass as if to toast the mighty glorious waters. For they haunt me too. Telling the stories that words fail to convey. Bypassing my head and going straight to the marrow of my bones; from the depths of which I draw my breath.
On this same trip my Daughter and I spent the afternoon on a beach and we marvled at it's splendor. It was unlike our beach at home in the South, yet oddly enough the same. We spoke of the differences of the many different waters. We learned invaluable lessons as these waters pierced our Souls. Life is all around us to impart. For us to decipher the greatest mysteries. This day as I watched my Daughter and we visited upon this beach; I was inspired to write the following:
"As the river flows so do the waves crash in bringing treasures to the shore. The boundless limits of creation will leave me inspired forevermore." ~TEC
The Wonderment here, is sometimes we need to swirl against the boulder and be seemingly "stuck." Other times we need to be catipulted airborne and flipped over. Just to find we are okay. If not better than okay. It readjusts our perception and recaluculates our compass. Ah, Rumi was so brilliant when quoted on to say the following quotes: "When you do things from your Soul, you feel a river moving in you, A joy."
"Soul, a moving river, body the riverbed." and the last one I share; may we all raise our glass and salute one another "may we be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love." This is the Wonderment of Life. xo
