Home, Life is Good

I made it home this past Sunday with eagerness. Upon arrival at the park & ride, I was met with a hot cup of Alterra coffee and a comfortable journey back home. YUM. It's been forever since someone had coffee waiting for me. It is the equivalent of love in my book. ;) I rested a bit before I was to pick up my son. While resting, the anxiety went away. Finally. The weekend of respite was filled with angst, and upon re-entry, lifted.

I still cannot explain why my body was sounding off the alarm bells. As I rested, my breath settled, my body relaxed, my heart calmed. Maybe I had too high of expectations for my weekend. The two retreats (silent) prior to this were amazing. The Catholicism this weekend penetrated my body; my walls went up, and I had a difficult time understanding what was being said. Most of the women attending were Catholic. I felt out of place and out of touch.

The week has been good. Re-entry uneventful. I am neither extremely joyful nor in the pits of despair. Middle ground is good for someone like me — it's a place to live in without drama or fear. I'm neither working toward something nor fixing up any messes.

I just am. I be.

I'm still.

Not thinking. Not fretting. Not planning.

Not worrying. Not complaining. Not looking for improvement.

Not messing. Not talking. Not figuring.

Not assessing. Not evaluating. Not doing.

Everything just is, and it's been a nice break from the fast pace of working-full-time-maintaining-a-home-single-motherdom.

My mind is at rest.

Oliver finally joined me last evening. Can you imagine? I have not spent yummy cuddle time with my Peanut since two weekends ago! Sunday night we played and loved up on each other. Monday he was back at his dad's for another three days. We had a scrumptious celebratory dinner last evening of sweet scallops, ripe tomatoes, earthy mushrooms and chewy, melt in your mouth ravioli. I love watching my son devour fresh, organic foods that I prepare. It's the mothering instinct in me, the momma bear providing nourishment for her cub. I missed him so!

I'll share a love poem for you by Wallace Stevens. I have never felt this to be more true than on Sunday (while resting) and the days following.

Read it slowly. Enjoy it. Grow with it. Sit with it. Let it melt in your mind. Come back and re-read it. The beauty of its language becomes more passionate upon each visit, each pondering.


Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.


-Wallace Stevens




Comments