OFF THE PAGE with River Jordan

OFF THE PAGE with River Jordan

The wind is whipping up the hill. The leaves on the trees trembling with each gust, making patterns like waves that wash across the tops of them. I follow the ripple of this – trees bending, and swaying and it brings so many things to mind at once I have to close my eyes and just stop and remember.

The sound of waves lapping at the edge of the surf. The tinkling of the bubbles as they swing back towards the deep. Like the sound of Champagne just poured, a sound that brings a soothing kind of delight.

Watching the wind make ripples across the water of Holmes Creek as I fished with Daddy, pulling up my worm thinking I’d gotten a bite and Daddy saying, “It’s just the wind.” I’d drop my worm back in the water, watch that red cork dance on the surface, the sunlight creating a thousand dazzling as diamonds stars, the cicada’s singing louder with each burst of wind, lower when the wind died down.

The silver tree my Mother put up each Christmas in the little living room right in front of our window with the colored light twirling around and casting shades of blue, red, green, against the branches. The low, struggling sound of the motor as the colored wheel grew older and me and sister grew up.

How precious the essence of these times where I stood in the midst of the happy moments of my life. And in spite of all those where things went sideways in my world, the good far outweighs the heartbreak.

I’ll be speaking in California this weekend and one of the topics I’ll be speaking on is the preciousness of time in the simplest of terms. How it’s in these moments of everyday life, our boring rituals if you will, that a great magic rests. We don’t always see it as its happening. Don’t appreciate it. Don’t realize that as we are doing the dishes, washing the dog, fighting with spouses, parents, children – that we are in the middle of some of the most magical moments afforded to a human on earth. The tender moments that thread the larger events together.

It’s easy to hang onto memories of major happenings in life. That first dance at a wedding. That great concert. An incredibly enjoyable first date. Baby’s first steps, first words. Winning a contest, an award. Earning a degree. Landing a new job. All these types of things are etched so strongly into our fabric they stand out at a moment’s notice but the tender, tiny minutes in between sometimes become rote, taken for granted, or tiredly taken for granted.

For anyone who kept up with me taking care of Mom, her taking care of me, us taking care of each other – then you know I had a contentious type of relationship with my Mom. It was rather simple. She wanted to change me. I won’t be changed. She wanted me to be successful in a profession that was a sure thing, a locked in deal, something with some security that would withstand all the ups and downs life might throw my way. But, I wasn’t born for that. And, would never bend to her desires for that even if I were able to.

In spite of that fact – we laughed a lot. Mom had a wicked sense of humor, was highly intelligent, survived things that surely, I would have given up and died but not her. Toughest stuff I have ever witnessed. She also read to me as a child, always bought me books, joined the Episcopal church when I was eleven which is one of the best things that ever happened in my life. She was open-minded in almost everything – except me – and loved the underdog because she sure had been one growing up poverty stricken in the deep south and picking cotton alongside my Grandmother to try to make enough to eat. (No one picks cotton as a way to work on their retirement fund.)

I waited on Mom hand and foot for years. And to a greater degree with every passing year and month. I fought with her till the end about my vocation as a writer explaining I didn’t choose it – it chose me. And in my tiredness which is a certain always for caregivers, I missed just a few things. I missed a few moments. I was in them but rushing to the next thing. Not realizing the holiness of those moments at the time but only now from a distance in retrospect.

The same happens when you are a young parent and your children are small and demanding and needy and your tired, trying to help with homework while cooking dinner and then there will be baths and PJ's and the brushing of teeth. And you blink and it’s gone, shifted forward and the present has fallen into the past and you are beyond those moments. (It’s also the reason Grandparents become sudden Superstars as if they had always been the most aware and perfect parents of all time – because now, from this distance, they know how fast the time will fly and how soon those children will grow out of whatever stage they are in.)

We busy and hustle through our days working towards that thing. You know – the thing you are working towards, desiring, wanting. Dot those i’s, cross those t’s. And, In the middle of all these minutes and moments, this energy that is us twirling through the vast universe, rotating day and night, circling the sun. In all that vast, star-studded darkness, the tiny light that is our life a spark on this big, blue planet never realizing we are at every moment a walking miracle of light and laughter, of story and struggle, lovers of the human soul.

If there should be a thing as a monthly resolution then for June, smack dab in the middle of my thousand deadlines and upcoming changes, I am determined to not let the light that is my life slip through my fingers. To breathe and inhabit the ground I stand on with great thanksgiving in my heart, and a kind of fearlessness in my mind.

Wishing for you this month the magic of all your moments in this sacred thing we call life.