spring thaw (inside and out)
I step out of the shower and stand dripping with my towel wrapped around me, looking out the bathroom window. The new day seems luminous, worth pausing for and gazing into even as my toes curl on the freezing tile floor.
The fields below the house are still covered with snow although the tops of the stone walls are finally visible. The sky seems a bit less austere, the sun more committed to its silent shining. It really doesn’t look like spring out there yet, with everything still bare and frozen, but something seems to have yielded. Something ineffable has changed. It’s as if the air itself is richer.
Something subtle has changed inside me, too. Everything external appears the same: upper-arm skin a bit saggy, belly soft, hair thinning and badly in need of a cut, the face in the mirror looking less and less like the younger person I still feel myself inside to be and more like my Grammie Stanchfield every day. (Those puckery little vertical lines above my upper lip! Where did they come from? Her.)
And yet, my heart is lighter.
A few weeks ago, I sat on the couch in my kitchen, brushing away tears, wondering how to respond to the most recent words of someone who has hurt me deeply. I thought I would write her a letter and instead what came out onto the page was a prayer. Not the words I needed to say to someone else, but the words I most needed to hear myself.
When the going gets tough may I have faith that things are unfolding as they are meant to.
It helps me to remember that there’s a bigger picture, a story being written that’s larger than the one I can see in front of my nose. And try as I might to avoid heartache, life will continue to have its way with me. To be human is to hurt, to worry, to wonder, to suffer, to stare at the ceiling at three a.m.
And yet, if there’s one more thing I know for sure, it’s this: whatever is happening in this moment is already in the process of turning into something else. Change is continual, and for that I can be either fearful or grateful. Today, I choose grateful.
Recently my friend Amy posted a quote I love on her beautiful blog My Path with Stars Bestrewn: “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
Another good, necessary reminder. For as it is in nature, so it is in life. For every dark night of the soul there is a sunrise, a brightening of the inner landscape. Smiles always follow tears. Joy will find a way, if I let it, to push up and out, through the rich, dark loam of heartache. And I am here on this earth to feel everything, to experience everything — the ups and the downs, the dark and the light, the freeze and the thaw, the drama and the denoument, the whole human catastrophe.
I can hunch my shoulders and duck my head and resist what is. (And oh, I’ve been so tempted this winter to resist, to hunch, to hide.) Or, with quiet curiosity, I can simply allow the fragile pages of my days to turn. What now? What next?
Still naked at my spot at the window, I watch a sleek copper-colored fox trot delicately across the crusty snow and hop up onto a rock, surveying her domain. Against the blanket of white, her tail flicks like a flame. I’m delighted to see her; I know this animal. To discover her here this morning is a lovely validation of life and the cyclical nature of things. For the last two springs, we have watched this beautiful wild girl as she raised her litters in in our field.
Each year as the trees bud and the matted winter grasses give way to new growth, the cubs emerge from their den beneath the rock pile, ready to meet the world.
From our own home on the hill we humans spend hours observing the goings on at the neighbors’ place. The wonder of new life never ceases to amaze. We hand the binoculars back and forth, entranced by the hunting expeditions of this watchful, dedicated mother and delighted by the cavorting pups, so hesitant at first to leave the security of their broad, flat, rock roof, but soon enough venturing further afield, bent on exploration.
And, always, there is drama. Five babies become four become three. Coyotes, we suspect. The first year, the family moved from one hole in the ground to another, leaving a single kit with a broken leg behind.
All through one freezing night, we fretted about the tiny fox cub, wondering if the mother would return to fetch it. In the morning, my neighbor Debbie and I intervened: we scooped up the abandoned baby and took it to a wildlife rehab center, hoping for the best. It died a few hours later. Life and death inexorably intertwined. The fragile pages turn.
Maybe this year, I think, the fox family will do better. But the mother entertains no such hope or expectation. For her, the only moment is right here, right now. The days are lengthening, warming; it’s time to prepare a den, to hunt, to assess the landscape, to get ready to begin again.
I pull on the same clothes I wore yesterday, come down to the kitchen, start coffee. And I assess my own landscape. It occurs to me that for the first time in months my heart feels unburdened, as if a stone has fallen off it and rolled quietly away.
It’s taken time, many sleepless nights, both patience and prayer, but I think I finally understand how I must make my peace with the person who has hurt me. I’m ready to accept an apology that’s not been offered, that probably never will be. I choose to forgive her anyway, unconditionally, as much for my sake as for hers.
If I can make room in my own heart for what she’s done, then I can also move toward healing – here, now, without needing to understand, without needing to be right, without needing to explain my version, without, in fact, needing anything at all — other than a willingness to let go and move on.
At last, this long hard winter is coming to an end. Soon, there will be yellow nubs on the forsythia, the first jewel-toned crocus pushing up through warming soil, robins arriving to build nests in the lilacs, a new family born in a snug hole in the field, hungry coyotes on the prowl. Endings, beginnings, life having its way — fierce and beautiful and fleeting. Always, there is loss entangled with growth. Always, there is mystery beyond human understanding. Always, we are challenged to surrender, to accept, to change.
The world beckons. Silently, somewhere deep within me, an invisible page turns. Forgiveness, it seems, goes hand in hand with faith, with humility. It is the soul-work of a winter-weary heart in spring: thawing, softening, opening to the light, to whatever is meant to be.
The post spring thaw
(inside and out) appeared first on Katrina Kenison.