Waters of Life

Flow through life like water
Continually moving
Never conforming to a certain shape other than your own
Glisten with the sun
Stir with storms
Drink the rain
Fluidly, glide through rapids
Shoot down the waterfall
Rest in the stillness
And keep flowing
                  -Pearl Grace

It is an interesting type of funny when you realize that you’re really not alone in experiencing life.  Life keeps life-ing all over all of us.  It is easy to become blinded to the truth.  The truth that everyone has a journey and every journey has mountains and valleys.  We have a lot more in common with each other than we know.  

Each and every person is a phenomenon.  

Beautiful, vibrant souls with hearts that beat, emitting infinite shades in a full spectrum of color.

Day to day.  Moment to moment.  It shifts.  A fluid kaleidoscope of feelings, emotions and thoughts.  Our own internal river.  The very essence of our being. 

Life has its mountains and valleys.  Twists, turns and rapids of turmoil.  Waterfalls where we fly off the edge, free fall down and get sucked under into the eddy below.

This eddy is the place we get stuck.  The weight of the falls continually flow forcefully, downward; holding our heads underwater.  Spinning in the current, around and around; like laundry in a washing machine on rough cycle.  It’s so fast and strong, it feels like we’ll never get out.  Once in a while it eases up and we attempt to escape, but can’t kick our legs fast enough before the tentacles whip out. Snatching us back in.

One of the worst ways to die, in my opinion, would be to drown.  Based on my observation, others would agree.  I see you.

You are the ones who keep fighting and holding your breath to survive.  Realize, if and when you feel weak, lesser, down or angry with yourself, that the opposite of what you are feeling at that moment is true.  You are some of the strongest, most courageous people walking the earth–phenomenons. 

I was asked a question, recently, “if I could write my whole story in its entirety, what is the one, singular, most burning question I would want answered?”

I’d want to know how I haven’t died 9,000 times already!

Think about yourself.  See yourself, what you’ve endured and give yourself some damn credit!

Even though, the water is still a bit murky from all the mud that was spun up, you eventually make it out.  Totally exhausted, floating on your back to the bank where the water becomes clear and still.

When you reach that place and stand up to walk out, something beautiful will catch your eye.

When you see it, you will know.

Take time to gaze in amazement, because what you’ll be looking at will be peering back into your eyes.

This is your most precious rescue…

It’s the reflection of the authentic you.  Being free to simply be. Exactly as you are.  

I believe that this is the journey we all have in common as we live, lose ourselves and eventually come to find ourselves.

I believe that this is the journey we all have in common as we live, lose ourselves and eventually come to find ourselves.

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Feet on bricks that don’t give, hand on door that won’t open without resistance. No peace, no love, no freedom, just him, them, their schedule, their wants, and needs. “Don’t contact me, I have boundaries. You don’t have boundaries.” So silence between mother and son stands as dividing sentry that says do not cross this line again. They were friends once, mother and son, but no more. Single mother with a paycheck son called mom so the two became one as often happens when there is no relief from one another. Boundaries are a new thing to the boundary-less, the used and owned mother so used to selfless serving that she didn’t know that she could state a need and have it heard.

In the beginning, she had said, “no marriage, no children, no houses, no home, I want the world.” And the man, the boy’s father had said, “marriage, children, homes, the world is mine, and you will serve me as I climb vast glittering corporate towers, and fly in jets to all the places you have spoken of seeing, but I’ll go without you.” So the mother waited, grew to grieving for her life, for her future, for the love she sought but did not find, and the child grew and learned to hate her.

The husband grew as well, he grew old, he found no joy in wife or child so he grew busy, sedentary, gray in hair and skin until he was old, old, before 50. The wife watched, trapped in the poverty of marriage where the man holds the cash and pinches the budget and ignores the wife who still serves the boy who always needs but now hates and she is, is what, a ghost in the wake of her youth standing in a kitchen with no one to cook for, mocked for her table cloths too rich, too fine, for saying silverware when she’s meant to say flatware, derided because once she had wished for so much more.

She’d been in college before the man came. But now her hair is gray, her mind slowed by the endless repetition of mother goose, Dr. Seuss, all those cats in their hats, all those endless rhymes, rhyming nothings, so good for the boy, so bad for her who’s mind had wished to wander, but now just wanders, lost over shopping lists, birthday gifts, and the other sundry of simple nothings that weaken the brain and kill the soul. If she got in the car, where would she go? If she made camp under a bridge who would miss her? A cloud breaks and for one brief moment the shy Seattle sun peaks through filling her eyes with light that teases but will not last.

How little a thing we are when we first begin to be a thing at all. Little breaths, babies’ breaths and babies’ tears, babies’ coos, the little things that define the undefined, the unmolded yet unique being called us. Oh delicious, soft fat arms, milk sent in the fold of chubby necks, the sweet pink of soft cherry cheeks. The us in us is fragrant with possibilities folded into jumpers and onesies and serenaded by a cacophony of vowels and consonants into a guttural noise that means us: Mary, George, Jane, Robert. We hear the sound that means us and we smile or scowl in rotation depending if we want to be wanted or are vexed to be disturbed. Silly brilliant things are names we wear like crowns defining ourselves by them as they define us to the world. Mary Ellington George St. Mari, would be as sweet if she were Jane, just Jane.

As baby bloom lengthens to childhood’s bumpy first steps the toddler emerges with creased brow and declares NO! NO I shan’t! No, I couldn’t possibly! No to everything you say. Simply NO! And little arms are crossed and little heads are shaken in resolute defiance, the simple NO sufficient in its rebellion. I am me, we all cry out. I shan’t, I won’t, I flatly refuse. The beauty of saying No, of being naughty, the tasty succulent delight of owning oneself fully and wholly in the now. NO! We cry, NO! But soft months that creep on cajoling or disciplinarian feet teach us to be pliable, polite, reasonable, inoffensive and sociable. So, we blend, we merge, we become one with society until our sacred self, our defining NO becomes a thing we no longer hold in our hand but have given, somehow, away to the masses.

And how we love the masses. We want them to love us back as we run to catch the ball, hoping it was thrown to us, wanting to hear our melodious syllables called out, here to me Jane. Let’s play Charlie. You are my best friend Mary. We run to the others, are polite and pliable, becoming not so much an us as a we. The we is a many legged creature which stumbles and tumbles through girlhood and boyhood raising one we up, as it throws one we down, decrying that this we was rude, and that we was wonderful, and don’t we all agree that the brown eyed we is awfully good looking in his new jacket? And we clutch to our we’s as they roll us about, spitting us out, taking us up, including, excluding, laughing, and rebuking, until the entire thing is smashed by the something called two.

And so goes us, so goes we, now there is you, and now there is me. A touch of the hand, a catch of the eye, I brush back your hair, your hand touches my thigh. We are sighs on summer breezes, kisses on grassy lawns, hands held between classes, stolen kisses on shadowed porches, a hand slipped up under a shirt. And the yearning grows and grows until we are no longer children but grown grasping things alive and alight with living. We say hello, we say goodbye, hearts break, tears dry, we part, we come together, we lose sight only to find one another once again in a different city, in a different time when laughter lines our eyes.

And if we are smart, we have found our NO! Stomped our foot, said hell yes to all the right things and hell no to all the wrong. We’ve held our own children and set them firmly on their feet. Only to linger now in this kind light of long ago loves and look, just look into each other’s eyes. I who was me, you who were you. And we hold our coffee cups in our knotted hands and remember how brilliant it is to be…just us.