Announcing Our Place...

Eyes shut tight, sobs won't stop. Closed off, I exist deep within, not of this world.

And into this distant place, some words come:

Are you okay, Mom? What can I do?

But it's not one voice, it's two. Both my sons are pleading, as I sit-lay on the floor. My logical thinking comes back, gradually or suddenly, I can't say. One son remains, sitting next to me. The other son has fled the room. Perhaps he thought it too sad.

I do some days, think it too sad.

After this particular fall, my family moved on shaken from what happened, like after shocks to our personal earthquake. When my health misadventure took us to a terrible place for awhile, with questions and fear, away from our easy ways and lazy days together. The ones we had taken for granted, since forever.

That day, the pain from the fall left my body. Like it always does. But sadness stayed with me. Like a hangover, a sadness hangover. And I wonder how long it will take to leave me. To leave my children's hearts, my husband's heart too. The dizzy, sweetly sickening desire for us to look back....to me before my leg was gone.

And I close my eyes to remember her.

The one who dashed in to stores, coffee shops, theaters and schools. The one who biked on trails, skiied down mountains, danced until sunrise....the one who didn't have to watch so carefully, her every single move. The one who had two legs. Then sometimes I look at photos. From before. Zooming in on my right leg. At her, or is she me? Did she turn into me or am I a whole new person, far from her? From me, who I used to be?

We all miss ourselves sometimes. Right? When our lives are shocked by something big, an earthquake. We no longer recognize ourselves then, transformed by our circumstance, turned inside out. A caricature of chaos to ourselves, we look in the mirror and ask...

...who are you?

Everything feels topsy turvy with a splash of melancholy, as we try to get our footing again. We slip and slide, only to remember it is not the world that has changed...but us. And so sometimes our people badly wish us to be the same, or at least be able to say with sureness...

...this is me and I am okay.

To assure them.

But a steady tempo thrums its own beat, in time, in time, in time....and a whisper says:

This will take as long as it takes, my dear, for you to know yourself again.

These times of unknowing come for each of us, they do. We cannot stop them, but there is a magic way to stitch ourselves back together, my friends. It is to watch for what and who we love...to calm our focus to love, again and again, like a divining rod. When doubts creep in, when we wonder if we will ever feel whole again...

...we put our focus to love.

I drink coffee in the morning, sweet and creamy, saying...this is love. I look into my back yard, at the raccoons and rabbits and flowers, saying...this is love. My sons offer their arm to steady me, saying...this is love. Then my husband brings me a cup of coffee, saying...this is love. And he slows down his walking, so that I can keep up, saying...this is love.

In these random episodes of upheaval, it is tempting to try to think our way back into ourselves again...to cinch our brows and say...think, think, think, remember, remember, remember...but our memories go to places that are strange, to places that are us no longer. So we must uncinch our brows, close our eyes, slow our breath.

There love can find us, filling in our empty holes and spaces and...

....we begin to understand who we are again.

As Mary Oliver writes, "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves...over and over announcing your place in the family of things."

When life spins too fast, we look to our heart...

...and we will know again.

Maybe not in an hour or a day or even a year...but I will know again. And then I will say...she is me and I am her and this is me.

Yes, this is me.