I'm not sure I can handle the whole Easter/resurrection thing this year. I had a dream this morning right before I woke up. David appeared, just walked up to me at a campground where I was camping with friends and I fell into his arms. He was so real. You would think it would make me feel better, but it put an ache in my morning that would not go away. I kept thinking of Mary on Easter morning. I think I know how she felt. I think I know how they all felt, that desperate loss of someone they loved beyond everyone else, this man who had come into their lives and changed everything. And I'm not sure I can bear thinking about it tomorrow morning. I know it should be comforting, but it's just not. I'm not even willing to go there and think positively about it. Not this year. Easter this year is not an Easter in my life right now, but I sure can relate to Good Friday. To me the seasons of the church year are not literal, but more metaphor for the seasons of our lives. And right now I am still in my Good Friday season. I know there will be an Easter morning at some point. I have to believe that, but I don't know if I will be able to celebrate it in the morning.
I lost myself in working again today. I weeded all the flower beds, dug up the tomato beds, dug up another bed and planted peas, planted four new rasberry bushes on the side of the hill. It took most of the day and I am gratefully exhausted. And overwhelmed. It took two of us to sort of keep up, how am I going to do it on my own?
And then I heated up some soup and sat on the deck in the sun and felt at peace. A book in my hands, a cat on my lap, and a dog at my feet. The creek sounds in the background. We built a lovely home and it still brings me great joy.
What a roller coaster ride this is. What did I say before? Riding the waves. Watching the river run, listening and learning and yearning, run river run.
Mother
ReplyDeleteTed Kooser
Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass an the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet,
only the delicate, star-petaled
blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume.
You have been gone a month today
and have missed three rains and one nightlong
watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar
from six to eight while fat spring clouds
went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured,
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,
dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
The meadowlarks are back, and the finches
are turning from green to gold. Those same
two geese have come to the pond again this year,
honking in over the trees and splashing down.
They never nest, but stay a week or two
then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts
burning in circles like birthday candles,
for this is the month of my birth, as you know,
the best month to be born in, thanks to you,
everything ready to burst with living.
There will be no more new flannel nightshirts
sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card
addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand.
You asked me if I would be sad when it happened
and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house
now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots
green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner,
as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that.
Were it not for the way you taught me to look
at the world, to see the life at play in everything,
I would have to be lonely forever.