The one that got away…

Every spring, I see a little sapling by the Japanese maple in our yard. Every year, it makes me happy in a:
Oh! My tree is having a baby, way.
I am hopeful for this little offspring – so fragile, so pretty, so full of possibility.

Every year, it withers away and dies in the mulch.

I feel a twinge, a sadness, now familiar, when I remember to look for it. Maybe next year, I think, and my fickle mind moves on to other matters.

 

Nature has its reasons, I tell myself. Darwin and the survival of the fittest, and all that good stuff.

This year again, I have hopes for the miniscule Japanese maple. I wonder if I should transplant it. I should look online, I should talk to someone about it. I should find out what to do.

I don’t. I remain preoccupied with other matters.

This morning I walk into the yard and look for the sapling. Still there. Withered. Tired. Its neck droops in defeat. It has given up. It is not going to make it.

Nature is cruel.

I remember my sorrow when as a child, I find out that a mother dog may sometimes eat some of its newborn (in the world of strays).

I remember us, a group of kids, pouring over a litter of adorable pups. I remember refusing to believe the words that come out of the neighbor kid’s mouth.

He claims the mother has eaten a couple of its newborn. He has seen it, himself or so he brags. I refuse to believe it. Brag mouth. Liar.  

Later, more facts, and grown-up words, corroborate the evidence. I have my doubts. I don’t want to believe it. I still don’t want to believe it.

It was the probably the weakest one. Something may have been wrong with it. The mother may not have had enough milk for the entire litter. Stray dogs are exhausted and hungry and tired after the birthing process. There are many explanations. Yet, my heart ached. My heart still aches.

It was probably the weakest link. Ah… the weakest link...

I suddenly wonder, if nature is real and cruel and survival is for the fittest, how the heck did I get away? How is it that I am still here?

Is there a reason for my being here? Is it simply evolution and modern medical techniques?

As always, I try to make sense of things. As always, I don’t quite succeed.

What is the reason for my making it? I wonder if it is for a reason. There must be. Maybe I am not the weakest link after all. Who’s to decide? Have we taken it out of Nature’s hands? Is this all simply nature-defiance?  

As always, I try to make sense of things. As always, I don’t quite succeed.

Nature-defying, or not, weakest link or not, all questions don’t necessarily have answers. And even if at times, I feel like the maple sapling – droopy, withered, ready to give up, I know I won’t. There is a secret stash of strength and faith and who knows, possibly a secret purpose even (which quite honestly evades me). Not sure where the strength comes from… from within or from outside, from those who care...

As always, I try to make sense of things. This time however, I’m quite okay with not succeeding.   

 

 

 

Magnetic links… of pain and joy

We all carry hurt and pain inside us. Tiny wounds, big hurts, some closed up, some raw – new ones, old ones – since childhood perhaps. Some heal, some are ignored, some fester within.

There are things on the inside – our inside. Hidden, closed, forgotten. We know they are wounds from the past, we assume they have closed up. We no longer pay attention to them.

There are things on the outside. Things happening to us and around us. In short. Life.

The two seem unrelated, yet seem inextricably connected.

For when there is pain on the outside - physical or emotional, it quickly connects to the pain inside. Pain that we imagine is long gone and buried.

Like a chain of magnetic links that connect swiftly and tightly to other links of pain – going down a well of the past – gripping other loops of pain. The chain becomes long, heavy, lugubrious, achy…

Dragging us down a faceless past - one forgotten or purportedly forgotten, we get embroiled in the links of pain, even if the episodes may be long erased.

The powerful magnets seem to extract every last bit of peskiest annoyance or hurt, buried deep within. The deadweight bears us down… like an albatross…

Shoo…shoo Baudelaire, shoo fleurs du mal. Just peachy huh? Exactly what we needed to uplift ourselves today?

Some years ago, (five to be precise), I decide to make a quilt of my daughter’s embroidery pieces and buy a quilting mat. A self-healing mat. Each time I use it, (And yes, it may be another good ten years that I use it, for that quilt to be done) I am amazed by it.

The blade roller or whatever it is called (tsk tsk… phony quilter), will often slice into the mat as it slices the fabric. In the time that I notice the paper-thin cut, put away the fabric, the slash in the mat closes up, right before my eyes. Quietly. Peacefully. Completely.

I marvel at it. I long to be it. To heal up so easily and simply. To be whole so effortlessly. To feel the pain, yet heal, despite the memory of the pain, without the memory of the pain. I wonder if it is the memory of the pain that drags us down – through the magnetic links of panic and fear. I wonder if it keeps us paralyzed in our future.

But again, just as there are loops of pain from the past, there are the links of joy. Especially with a magnet for metaphor, opposites should attract, right? So, in an ideal world, when there is pain on the outside, these magnetic links should bring out all the good from the past and ease the pain of the present.

I don’t know if that happens. But perhaps we can train our magnets to do so. Just don’t ask me how. And if you find out, do let me too.

For a start, however, when we are in a funk, it may help to know that these magnetic links exist (now that it is all a proven theory (sic.)). And maybe over time, we will recognize the links we make, and will learn to gently break the connections, and allow some of the links to dissolve and crumble into the abyss of the past, holding on to the joyous ones, believing in the joyous ones, refusing to be clutched by the painful ones.

Allowing the past to crumble, allowing us to be free in the present.

The Cat’s out of the Bag…

Some things are best kept under wraps. Mostly for us. The “things”, probably don’t care, and would rather be out there, breathing freely. 

We keep them under wraps, shrouded in doubt, uncertainty, insecurity, lack of faith… questioning the need, the sincerity.

Now, I don’t like secrets. Not to say, I like to shout out from the rooftops either. Yet, that is exactly what I do - a few weeks ago. From our generation’s equivalent of rooftop – the social media.

I belong to a small writers group and we have a ‘secret’ group on Facebook. Now instead of posting something to our ‘seeecret’ group, I post it such that anyone with access to my facebook page can see it. Of course, it is the very thing I don’t want anyone to know about (other than the five members of my group).

Ahem… that is exactly why I choose to write about it, here?? Oh well… And since I feel particularly reckless, here it is:

Yikes! The meeting minutes and monthly goals are going to haunt me! A’s in Japan, A’s away at camp, and I am supposed to be working on that novel.
Haven’t written a single line…no, not a single word. If Rick Riordan, or someone else writes MY novel before I do, hope you ladies will hand me tissues for the sea of tears…Sigh…

Ha! Now, before you admire my courage, be aware that only my facebook friends read this, the blog does not have metadata and other fancy things to make it pop on searches. Why, I just realized, it doesn’t even mention my name. Hmm… but let's not digress...

Funny how that happens. The very thing we guard, holding tightly, not allowing to escape, slides out of our hands, like it is nothing…  sticky clicky fingers, social media, or not.

Mortified, I gasp, delete it. By now, some folks have already commented on the post. More mortification. I write a flurried message to only the closed group. I check fifty times before I click ‘post’. My kind friends assuage the faux pas.

It is kind of funny, I tell myself. Surely I will have a good laugh later. I do. Yet, I don’t go near the computer. I don’t write at all. Not the novel, not even my silly blog. Maybe I am busy. I am. Or so, I tell myself, convince myself.

Now this book is not a life’s dream or anything like that. I am too old and curmudgeonly for dreamy-eyed visions or the accompanying fervor.

It is simply a possibility. A faint one in that. Yet, there is a certain vulnerability that goes with it. A certain holding of the breath, a certain hesitation to say it out aloud. To allow it to escape my lips. To admit it. Accept it. To allow myself to dream of it.

Is this what boring middle-aged people do to protect ourselves from disappointment? That pile can look larger than life if we choose to examine it. But again, why would we want to, right?

At what point/ stage in our life, do dreams get fitted into cynical shelves of practicality, cased no longer in rose colored glasses, but stark reality-filled ones?  

When do we stop shouting things out from rooftops, committing, admitting, allowing them to be, to float about?

Of course, there are other instances, when it may simply be hard to say it out aloud – not because we want to keep it secret, but there is some emotionality attached to it.

Does keeping it under wraps increase our vulnerability, our sensitivity towards the matter? Is this then a silly little example, a silly little experiment?

I don’t know. However, I do know this... I don’t write a single word in weeks. I write this is in twenty minutes. My thoughts move, my mind dances, my fingers fly on the keyboard - they know exactly what to do. A momentary calm prevails. Novel or not, I hope I will always give myself permission to do this.