Month: December 2014

The In-Between Time

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“…I see myself at crossroads in my life, mapless, lacking bits of knowledge – then, the Moon breaks through, lights up the path before me…” –John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

This time of year is always a restless one for me. Here in Georgia, December can careen wildly from hot to cold, from one extreme to the other. It is not-quite-Christmas, and not-quite-winter. But the autumn (always my season of possibility) has departed, and I find myself in waiting mode. The problem is, I have no idea what I’m waiting for.

It’s a little different this year, though. If I were kind to myself, I would say that I find myself “at a crossroads.” The more honest version, I believe, is “I am stuck.” For every push, there is a pulling back. For every inclination, there is a reason not to, so, instead of doing something–anything–I end up screwing around and wasting time.

I am in between. In between careers. In between stages of my life (I still feel like a little kid most of the time. Sometimes it shocks me–it’s a wonderful shock, but still a shock–that I have a two-year-old who is totally dependent on me. It’s hard to reconcile the need to be a strong, free, independent woman with the overwhelming need to completely shelter and protect my Bear, and to facilitate his learning and to spend-every-second-possible-with-him-because-these-moments-will-never-come-around-again. Oy.). In between seasons. In between children, perhaps? In between my past life of being stupid and growing up, and my life-to-come, in which logic would dictate that I will live as though I learned some lessons from…being stupid and growing up.

So, so many in-betweens.

I just feel in my bones that the time is fast approaching when I’m going to have to jump, that a sea-change is about to overtake me, and I can either falter or I can figure out how to embrace it, how to direct it to the place I want it to go. To the place where I end up, looking around myself with fresh eyes, and say, “Oh, yes. This is it.”

He and She

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This morning, I sat in my car, waiting for caffeine at a drive-thru. Wearing crumpled pajamas, and trying to soothe a braying Bear in the backseat (he gets wiggly when the car doesn’t move for a few minutes), I watched an elderly couple cross the parking lot, coffees in hand.

They were holding hands. The woman was tiny, teeny-tiny, diminutive, and she was walking carefully, tottering in high heels–very high heels for a woman of her age. She wore the sweetest raincoat over her dress; it almost looked like a pinafore, and even from across the parking lot, I could tell it had been carefully starched. Her hair was arranged carefully in a bun. The husband, well dressed and wet-hair combed, motioned for his wife to wait at the curb while he pulled their car out of its space…a nod to chivalry? A concern for her walking on those too-high heels?…and he backed their enormous white car out. She carefully lowered herself into the car, balancing her coffee, and she reached out almost too far to shut the car door.

The sweetness of this scene just flooded over me, and there was something else, too. Maybe a nostalgia for something I haven’t known; days in which women didn’t hop in their cars to go to the Starbucks drive-thru without even brushing their hair or changing out of their pajamas. I thought of my own grandmother, and her refusal to capitulate to demands that she stop wearing heels, even when her ankles were swollen with age, and the risk of falling was very real.

The rain started to fall as they drove out of the parking lot. I watched their taillights disappear and pulled forward, hand outstretched, waiting to start my day.

I am finished.

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I’m not of the land of the polished, the land of the organized junk drawer and the land of fresh manicures. I’m just not. And I’m learning to make peace with that.

I reside in the rain. My heart lies in a crib with a soundly sleeping, sweet-smelling baby boy, growing up much too quickly. My heart lies in the downpour of the water, coursing through the gutters, dampening the grey concrete, smoothing the edges of the world around me. My heart lies in the grass over the bones of my mother, as I sit near her and talk to her and ask her to guide the rest of my life from her–better–vantage point.

There are more important things than vacuuming my living room, or cleaning out my closet. There are more important things than disappearing through drink. There are more important things. And I am finished with not finding them.