Living My Glory!

"I dream in my dream all the dreams
of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers."
~Walt Whitman

I opened Whitman and it fell to The Sleepers. And I read and she slept.

And a part of me longed to know that she heard me and another longed to put a spell upon her - that she could leave gently, knowing that nothing more was asked of her, that she no longer needed to be a dutiful wife, loving mother, loyal daughter, trusting friend, courageous confident, biggest fan, fearless resolute … she could just rest in her halo - allow the words of his lullaby to soothe her.

And I saw this peace all around me, light entering this lens in swirls of color, then spinning, mixing, and exiting behind me … like rainbow footsteps erupting in blooms.

And there was, simultaneously, a dropping, a falling together, a willingness to be mixed and discovered, like the motion of turning the lens of a kaleidoscope and the commitment of the colors and shapes within.

And I saw it in the words from Rilke that spilled through me and onto the page at my mother's gravesite eulogy ... "Yae!"

And I saw it in my father’s courage as he rose every day - how he was learning to walk again - and I saw it in the realization that I was not here to chastise him or show him the 'way' but to 'be the way '… to allow him with all my heart to find his own steady.

And I saw it in my eldest as he nourished and comforted us with his time and attention. And I saw it in the pride of my youngest as we walked along the shore soon to host many exciting, new sights and sounds, and in how my husband rejoiced for their potential – this freedom!

And I saw it in the man sitting next to me on the airplane– and in the initial constriction – the mind that accrued much evidence against … at the danger of suppressing and disempowering the feminine – I saw it in what he was studying, and in how we spoke. I saw it in our shared kindness which spilled open to reveal a singular well – the seed of the Word and the potential of its meaning!

And I saw it in the answer - LionHeart - that appeared when doubt asked, 'How will I know? Show me a sign."

And I saw it in the many sounds of love and silence and joy and pain that erupted like a 'sun with sharp teeth' – from friends and from clients and from family and from strangers, and how they comforted us with their intention to relieve and to hold - and how they, in turn, were comforted by this heart and this mind and this soul.

... and in the reasons isolated from love,
and in the search through memories to forget.

And I saw it over and over again in the words that ripened and in the search for ripened words, and in the memories forgotten

and in how they longed to be held.

Wave by wave I rose above the break of this perceptual horizon, between my mother's life and her impending death - taking breathes and riding the current just below the surface - as arms pulled forward and legs propelled vertically across the eternal horizon of time, careful not to lose sight of the shore called 'me'.