Off to the East

My daughter is heading off to college today. It is roughly a 4 hour drive to the east. A friend has graciously agreed to drive us. We will spend the night in a hotel that my employers paid for, as a gift to me in appreciation for all my hard work for them this summer. And then tomorrow, between the hours of 1 and 2, we will move my daughter in to this new phase of her life.

I have had many thoughts and emotions about this, not surprisingly, what with my only child going off to school. Part of my mind is awhirl in the sense of how fast time has gone by, when in fact, the years passed as years will and were not sped up by some magic or technological process. It goes fast, and yet, we lived every minute of it.

I can easily say I never expected to raise a child alone, and I can also easily say I did not expect to help her reach for and achieve her life goals alone either. I had thought her Fuckhead Father (FF) would have done the right thing and helped with her expenses. But no. His selfishness has reached a new peak, and I am not wasting any more thought or space on that pathetic fact.

We haven't had an easy summer of it, her and I. Like with most things in her life, what people told me I could expect simply did not happen. When she was a baby and we lived on the farm with FF, people told me how wonderful it is she can grow up in such a delightful place, surrounded by trees and fields and nature. As it turned out, she doesn't actually like being outside all that much, and prefers urban stimulation to nature's sights, sounds, and scents. This summer people told me how wonderful it will be to do things with her and make memories with her, but it turned out she was, for the most part, surly and uncommunicative and largely ungrateful. I am sure it was her way of distancing herself from me, as I have also in my own ways begun to distance myself from her.

She has had her own small freak-outs. She isn't one to talk about her emotions much, but she has changed the color of her hair 3 times in the span of a month.

Last night she came home from a concert, her last outing with a high school friend -- the only high school friend left in town as her college starts even later than my daughter's -- and she began to panic, saying she could not believe it was time to leave already and she is not ready and she has so much to do and blah blah. I told her she had plenty of time, and once she gets there, she and all the other people on her floor, and in her suite, will all be in the same boat. I think she will be fine. I think she is coming into herself. I think this college will provide her with the best opportunity she could hope for, and I think the place is a good fit. We have all day today to get there, to sleep over, and to finally move in early tomorrow afternoon.

When I got up this morning, all her stuff is packed, ready, and assembled here in the livingroom, needing only to be put in the back of our friend's car.

It is my wish that my daughter grows into her beautiful, regal, swan self, and that she begins to trust herself and have confidence in her abilities. She is beautiful; she is intelligent; she is talented-- and hopefully one day, awareness of all those gifts will awaken in her.

I am grateful to have been blessed all these years with as gentle and dignified a spirit as hers to nurture and care for. She has always seemed older than her years to me, even as a baby. I would hold her in my arms and look into her wise, old eyes and have to consciously remind myself that even though I perceive an old, old soul in her, her tiny body is but a few months old. It has always been that way -- me needing to remind myself that even though I see the elder spirit in her, to herself she is what she is, the present chronological age she knows herself to be.

As for me, I am letting her go into the east, the place of the rising sun, of the gift of light, of the dawning of consciousness. And, I will look to the east every morning, after I climb this hill with my dogs, and I will send wishes for peace and contentment, prayers of love and protection her way. The wind will carry them, I trust, and wrap them safely around her.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

photo: Winter Sunrise, courtesy of freefoto.com

Bumby and the Blackberries

There's a wild blackberry patch on our early morning walk. Both the dogs like to pick and eat the berries. However, Bumby, who is now a 9 year old shaggy grey mess of a mongrel (not unlike myself were I to stop coloring my hair...) delights in the berries with a joy that wiggles her entire body with anticipated delight. She grabs the berries with her front teeth, she gobbles, her tail wags and her whole body curves in an ecstatic dance.

Little Bear, now 10 and generally more serious in his outlook, likes the berries too, and yet he eats with a single minded focus, moving in a straight line, direct and intent on the prize--much like the sled dog he is, pacing steadily along a straight track.

But Bumby's childlike joy! What a sight to see! And as with children, I have to finally say, 'Okay, time to go...", and I pull them away, as they stretch back, eyes looking longingly at the berries.

I do love dogs.

Sunshine

I can wake up any morning feeling like utter crap, rumpled and stained by bad dreams, or coated in the stale bread crumbs of old worries, but as soon as I get outside and up the hill and see the new day's sunlight tinting the mist an amber gold, and smell the freshness of the night's last moist exhalations coating the grass, and rest my eyes on the myriad shades of green plant life reaching up to the light all around me, I am refreshed, I am renewed -- as new as the day.

Which somehow reminds me -- how about those Jamaican athletes tearing up the track at the Olympics? Given the fact Jamaica is an island of great monetary poverty and has one of the highest murder rates in the world (according to the UN), what brilliant rays of sunshine and hope these brilliant athletes are. And I must say that when I heard how Usain Bolt finished the 100m, looking back, seeing everyone far behind and slowing up in laughter and joy, despite not yet reaching the finish line (and imagine what a time he might have had if he'd kept charging on instead of beginning to celebrate) I thought, how Jamaican of him.....

When I was in Jamaica in July, my special friend Morris and I had a lot of fun drawing on concrete and stones with sidewalk chalk. He drew a heart and then began to write: "Jesus love me and send (h)is sun to shine'. (Jamaicans don't pronounce the letter 'h' -- that's why he wrote 'is' instead of 'his'.)

(Morris, by the way, is roughly 15. I have written of him before. No one knows his true age or birth date, and he and his sister Kerry Ann, are true orphans, with no family to claim them. Which is a sadder thing in Jamaica, where it seems like everyone is connected to someone else somehow. Morris is also what people there call 'simple'. He is one of the sweetest, gentlest souls I have ever encountered.)

I was so inspired by him that I drew a bright yellow star on a large round stone sticking out of the ground. I wrote the word 'Shine' beneath it. And when Morris repeated the word 'shine', I told him he shines, I told him when he smiles, he shines.

Our days are full of shining stars. May you see them, may you greet them, may you know them, and may you shine right back at them.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

"...And the Sun Shines"

I went to the Childen's Home in Jamaica this past July again, my 4th trip. And I do plan to write about it here. I only just began transcribing my journal yesterday. The depth of my emotions surrounding the trip this year is stupendous. It has taken me a lot of time to even be able to begin to put it into words. Going back into the journal was almost like diving deep into an underwater city; there is still so much there that is yet untouched, much less brought up to the surface and the light.

To our partner church, it is a mission trip with A, B, C goals. Receipts are expected, measurable results demanded. To our church, it is a journey of the heart. We go to connect with people, to hug and hold and listen to children who are accustomed to being overlooked. I have real relationships happening there now, after 4 visits. My heart has opened and I have come to love in a way I never allow myself to love here, in the north. Hard to explain. There is an immediacy, a directness, an authenticity to the expression of the people I encounter there. Whereas here, people wear more masks, hide behind artifice and social forms. It is an elaborate dance of subterfuge. Not so there. And it is a relief and a joy.

I love Jamaica. I am at home there. I did a little experiment on the bus ride back down to Ochi after we had left the kids. The windows were open. I smiled at every man I saw, and every man I saw, regardless of age, looked right back at me and smiled in return. Openly, like sunshine.

Before I left, I found an explanation of the colors of the Jamaican flag, the yellow, green, and black. This is what I found: "Hardship there is, but the land is green, and the sun shines."

To be continued.

Until next time, I remain your friend, Rozenkraai

I Told the Sky How Annoyed I Was

I just went through a freaky full moon. I just went through a week from hell. I just walked through the fires and tread the raging waters, carrying a balloon as I went, alternately angry and racked with laughter. Where to begin?

18 years ago, when my daughter was born? Life certainly changed then. And now she is informing me she is legally an adult and can drink in Canada, she can drink in Mexico, she can get a tattoo and work as a stripper. She can vote and go to war. Good for you, I think. But can you put your clothes away?

Her birthday was Tuesday. She has been so odd, so difficult to please all summer that I, veteran of abuse that I am, found myself with confidence whittled away to a bare shred of finest gossamer spider web nothing. Buy her a gift? And watch her lip subtly curl in a sneer? No. Not up for that. Gave her money and took her out for a meal. The rain poured as we went, though the western sky was sunny and clear and so we walked beneath the arch of a great rainbow. She thought it was there for her, and I thought it was there for me. Mothers remember their children's birthdays in a slightly different light.

We got through the meal and she didn't sneer or roll her eyes. A good thing. It has been a summer of such. She is off to college in 2 weeks. She is living more in the then than in the now. It's how she deals with it. This change, massive, like a continent altered by earthquake or hurricane.

The next day, with steamy condescension in her voice, she lectured me on perceived realities ahead. Her tone clearly said, You are stupid, and I don't need your help. And so I very calmly told her how her summer long sneers and sighs and nothing is good enough for this princess affected me, chipping away at my confidence until I did not even know what to give her for her birthday. I had given other gifts this summer that were met with 'So what'. And I told her that. All very matter-of-factly I told her that, and I told her more, and then I took myself off to my room, to read and be very far away from ungrateful changeling children becoming women, gawky chicks becoming regal swans and yet not as graceful as they will be once they have had more practice.

That night I dreamt of a beautiful silvery city, shining by a misty white and softly blue ocean. The edge of the world. I was driving her there. And I knew then, I was ready to let her go.

That was Wednesday. By Thursday, she was making an effort to be pleasant. I made an effort to be appreciative. Throughout this time, the rain fell while the sun shone, thunder boomed out of a blue sky, and the moon grew fuller, lighting up the midnight sky.

Friday morning, 5:45am. I open the back door and hook the tie-out to Little Bear's collar. I shut the door, attend to the morning tasks, hear him lunge at a cat, most likely, and then his woof, farther away. I opened the door, went down the porch steps and found his collar, broken, attached to the lead, the one I got special, the one that can take 1700 pounds worth of lunge. The lead held; the collar failed--the second he had broken this year.

When Little Bear runs away, it is an opportunity for panic. He kills cats, given the opportunity. He plays smart ass with the cars. He will not let me catch him. He rolls in stink and he eats nasty unnameable objects. But that morning, I felt a true sense of God's peace within me, and I was not worried--I thought I would first have my tea and my devotions, my Scripture reading, and my prayers. Then I would take out Bumby on a lead and try to find him.

And so we went. And Little Bear, intrigued, followed us. He came close enough for me to catch him, but Bumby leapt at him, and so, he skittered off. That pissed me off. I dragged Bumby back to the house, and made her go in. She barked, she yipped, I heard her through the window. I saw Little Bear up the hill. I set off after him. I kept going up, looking for him, and when I got nearly to the top, I happened to look back down the hill, and I see Little Bear crossing the road back into our driveway. Which meant I had to hoof it all the way back down to try to get him. As I walked back, I looked up at the sky, and I said to God, in an angry tone, "I really do not need this." If I were in a movie I would have shaken my fist at the sky too.

I must say here, that despite all this drama, I had wakened with a sense of calm. And that calm was still inside me, but it was eroding fast. My sense, my faith, that all would be well was slipping away from me.

So here comes Little Bear, back up the hill towards me, but over across the way. I live on a fairly busy road by small town standards. He had already lunged out at a passing truck and made me scream his name. I kept talking to him as he came up nearer to me. I had angled completely across the road by this time.

Little Bear is wild and wily for a domesticated dog. He will not ever come to me. What he will do is he will stop long enough to let me come to him. And so he did, under the ruse of sniffing at a tuft of grass. He let me approach him and praise him and stroke him and put the leash around his neck. Then we went back to the house and got Bumby and had our walk.

All this to say, God was testing me. God was waiting to see if I lost my cool and panicked. I almost did. God wasn't through with me either.

I got home and discovered the phone line was dead. I already did not have a working computer, and now no phone either. I called it in to the phone company and the computer voice told me it would be fixed by 5pm, Monday. 3 days away. Yippee.

The rest of the day was the usual crap. Work. Walking. I drove a borrowed car with a cracked windshield to get Little Bear a new collar. My daughter went with her Fuckhead Father (FF) for the weekend. I went to bed when it got dark, reading a thick novel, eloquent, beautiful, tragic and cruel.

Around 1am I heard a tremendous cat fight. It sounded awfully close, like maybe it was even inside. I got up to go out and look. The screen in the kitchen window was gone! I did a quick head count of the cats and discovered one was gone. I shut the window fast, and found flip flops and went outside, into the heavy dewey wet, into the silvery moonlight, like walking into water. I looked for the screen. It was nowhere I could see. I called the cat. I walked down into the yard, calling his name, softly. I went back inside and got Little Bear, wanting to see how he would react once he was outside. He acted as if nothing were amiss. I looked for the screen some more, I circled the house calling the cat. Finally I went back inside. And there was the cat standing in the kitchen. Where had he been? I wedged a wooden spoon in the window to make sure it stayed shut, for I was properly freaked out by then, thinking how easy it was for someone, any one, anything, to get into the house--and with the dead phone, I was utterly unable to call 911. I went back to bed and prayed prayers of thanksgiving to God while hearing another cat fight continuing on outside my window. I was so mindfully thankful we were all inside and safe. Thankful no cats had jumped out the window into the night, thankful no cats or rabid raccoons or whatevers had jumped in the window into the house!

I was grateful and mindful of all our blessings. But I was also slightly rattled out of my mind, as were the cats long into the next day. Even so, God had spoken to me yet again, in the deep of the night, lit by a silvery moon, God had called to me to respond, and I rose from my sleep and stepped into the darkness and I responded and never felt afraid, just saw what needed to be done, and did it. (Though as I did it, a part of my mind reminded me of how such scenes play out in movies, with the woman taken unawares by creepy men or space aliens hiding in the vines. A part of my mind was also thinking, as I walked through the cold wet grass calling the missing cat that actually I wouldn't mind having one cat less, that it'd be a bit of a relief.)

I had been having a crisis of faith all week. Exhausted, frustrated, discouraged. Saying to the Lord, "I believe; help my unbelief". He heard me. It was rough and rocky and potentially scary but I felt like I was being tested, tested to a deeper level of faith in the one God who loves and cares for us, who holds us in the palm of his hands, who shelters us under his great wings. Ragged and rattled, I had lost the feel of that assurance, but by the end of Friday into Saturday, I most securely had it back.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai

Back

I have been away for far too long. So much has happened, so much has changed. I will be adding entries here again soon. For now, I leave you with a haiku:

the river tells me
always keep moving forward
singing as you go.