Moving on, through, under, over

Oh, but life can be cruel and difficult.

My coworker moved house last week. She had been trying to buy the home she was renting, but her financing fell through (to do with something she discovered during her recent divorce after a very long marriage). Now, normally moving house is just stressful and expensive. But in her case, it was downright heartbreaking. Soul consuming. Gut wrenching.

See, she and her family moved into that house about 5 months before her middle child, her only son, was killed in a plane crash at the age of 14. She was forced to leave the last place her son lived. Even though they'd only been there a few months, leaving the last space he dwelled in was devastating for her.

She and I have talked a lot about this and about how difficult it is leaving that place where she last saw, heard, touched her beloved boy. My heart absolutely goes out to her. I can't tell you the number of times I have just wanted to put him back together and present him to her, so she can once again hear him call her "Mom." Oh, how I wish I had that power.

On top of the moving, she got a cold, so she was dealing with physical illness as well as a stress so deep and so engulfing that she wondered if she needed to quit working and go on disability. Her losses run deep - her son, her marriage, and her eldest daughter going away to college 8 hours away.  But she is making it through, day by day.

I brought her a bottle of wine today, along with a card. I found the card from some that the Epilepsy Foundation had sent to me; the cards were all paintings done by people with epilepsy. This particular one featured differently colored human shapes, piled up in sort of a pyramid, lifting up the one on top. I felt it appropriate, hoping she is feeling lots of support.

I specifically picked out a wine from Chile,  and I told her the reason why: it is one of my favorite places on earth, and holds good memories of a place filled with beauty, kindness, and the friendliest folks I've ever met. And I wrote that I hope she finds that in her new place - a place to build new memories and fill with amazing people. I think she will, if she can make it through this really, really difficult time.

After all the devastation and loss she has endured, I want that for her, more than anything.

How Much Time Do I Spend in Nature? (another prompt from the NYT)

The short answer? Not enough.

I think my love affair with nature started when I was very young. I was born in a small town in West Virginia called Big Chimney. There was a river behind our house, and creeks in various places. Being outside was a fact of life when the weather was nice (and even when it wasn't). Some of my earliest memories are with my older sisters, catching crawdads in a creek or sucking on honesuckle flowers we plucked from vines during an evening walk. In fact, the scent of honeysuckle to this day takes me back to my very youngest days that I remember - it positively transports me to a place I loved.

With 4 kids, my parents couldn't afford lavish vacations. We spent our free time camping, fishing, or at the beach. We were constantly interacting with our natural world - digging worms in the yard for bait, wandering the woods on a camping trip or being dragged around a botanical garden so my photographer-hobbyist mother could take a million pictures.

And even when I moved to my grandmother's house, her little town offered many chances to interact with nature. She kept a huge garden and several fruit trees - we rarely bought fruit or vegetables because we grew it all, and canned or froze everything we couldn't immediately use.

I spent my free time riding my bike out in the country. I was outside every chance I could get.

And now, as an adult, living in the most beautiful place I have ever lived - it's all around me. The Sandia and Manzano mountains still captivate me. I love hiking in the foothills - I delight in the occasional lizard sighting, I marvel at the desert flowers, and inhale air that is so fresh and clean and pure.

There is so much beauty in this world that it makes me want to weep at times. The colors, the sounds, the textures and tastes and sheer aura of it all together is just incredible. If there is a church for an atheist - nature is it for me. It's my church. And I wish I had more time to worship there.

Do you think you're brave? (writing prompt from the New York Times)

Ah, of course I picked an easy prompt: yes, I think I'm brave. No question about that.

The funny thing is, it is things least likely to really hurt me that I tell people I am afraid of - scary movies, snakes, and zombies - that I actively avoid. Shut up, I know avoiding zombies is not an active decision!

I started off brave - I had to be. Watching my mother fight cancer and her husband, watching my family explode when I was just 8, moving to a completely different part of the country sharing a classroom with kids who'd all known each other practically since birth? That was scary.

I navigated my way through a serious trauma in my childhood to what was, as I look back on it, a pretty idyllic upbringing. I didn't have everything I wanted but I certainly had everything I needed. And I had the best thing of all: a fearless grandmother to raise me.

Oh sure, she was not one to take risks - she warned us all the time about all the mights and woulds and coulds. And whenever someone asks me what is something I'd change about the way I was parented, that's about the only thing I would change. But she stood mentally healthy and optimistic despite life really trying to knock her down.

I'm the same way. I think I'm brave because at my age, I know the hard things that happen. I know there are a million ways to break a heart, and plenty of them have nothing to do with romantic love. I know living means a risk of dying, loving means a risk of hurting, and the hundred little decisions we make every day can have consequences you won't know until much, much later. I am brave because when it counts, I don't take the easy way. Oh, it might take me a little while to gather up my reserves and get off the established path, but I always do eventually.

I'm brave because I do take risks. Most of the time they are pretty calculated, but I do take them. I took a risk moving 1000 miles from friends and family with a man I very much loved at the time. I took a risk leaving him when I had next to nothing to keep myself and my children afloat. I took a risk when I tried marriage again later, and it fell apart too. I'm currently taking risks thinking maybe, just maybe, I'm not a complete moron at love and relationships and that I might still have something to offer.

But really, bravery isn't about never being afraid. I'm afraid plenty. I'm afraid when my son is on a weekend camping trip without me, and what if a really bad seizure and injury occurs. I'm afraid when I get a mammogram every year. I'm afraid when I get a new project at work that I haven't seen before and I want to do so well and I worry that I won't.  I am afraid when I speak honestly with someone about something I know they will not want to hear. Oh yes, there are things I am afraid of.

But I continue to participate in this life making choices every day that aren't always the easy ones. I continue believing in myself enough to do that, because...

I.

Am.

Brave.

False Start

Pissed off and broken
Harsh words spoken
Get out of my life
No - come back,
Be my wife!
Get out of my head
This feeling's not dead
I meant what I said
But did I?