acceptance and surrender

it's miserable outside, slushy and drizzly and cold as the sun sets at just after 5pm, but the house is warm and its quiet. 

i forget how much i crave this. need this. enjoy this. the quiet moments.

2021 ended hard, in some ways, as it had started. it ended with mike and me having covid. zoe having a seizure, rose being in a hard place on top of 2 new jobs, 4 teens in a new school situation, buying a house, moving across the world, leaving a community we loved and work we felt called into, to return to part of the country i never wanted to live in again after i left at 22. 

last night it rained a hard but gentle rain - steady and consistent. i awoke in the night and felt the lulled feeling i had in uganda when through the screen i would hear that familiar soothing downpour. maybe because the sun rises and sets at the same time year round, it is the rains that helped signal where or when  we were in the year- a connection to the earth- to the bigger world around us. i listened with remembrance and longing, there was some longing.

because it has been hard. 

trying to find our feet here is dizzying. america is busy. the pace is faster and convenience costs not just money but time. i miss daily walks on dusty roads with potholes filled with tile chips and letting the sun tell me what time it is and all the birds songs (yes even the ibis) and the heat of the day and the sounds of the night and that rain that was gifted to me in sound last night.

i listened to a podcast with Martha Beck about happiness and listening to ourselves and not the consensus of the voices of the world, about moving toward the Warmth, the Knowing. the Light. letting that be our guide. there have been times when i have done this and times when i have not and times when the other people in my life who i am responsible for needed warmth and light and the Knowing lead me there, but it overshadowed what felt warmest to me had i been alone.

zoe just left after being with us for 5 days. i picked her up on wednesday, she had 2 appointments and we had family time and now mike is driving her back to her program. it's hard to put into words the feeling around both her being here and her leaving. it's familiar and strange, it's bittersweet, it's heartwarming and heartbreaking. i feel strong and weak, like i'm doing the right thing and the wrong thing, that i have come to know what is probably best and that i know nothing. that i will really never know. that this will always be our life- a question. a wondering. a bittersweet tension of opposites and the challenge of holding that tension while also keeping our hands open to what comes- to letting go. 

 i used to describe life with zoe as groundhog day- that movie when everyday they wake up and it's the same as the day before- life on repeat. you can predict what is going to happen in a given situation. i know her triggers, i know what makes her laugh, her expressions, her refusals, what will be a fight. now that the other kids are older, and they begin their last chapters at home as children - i am reminded of how zoe's life doesn't change that much. she is like a ugandan day- 7am, 7pm constantly - consistently -predictably. or the year- rainy season, dry season, but the leaves don't turn color, whither and fall, nothing freezes, goes dormant and blooms again. 

when we first got to uganda i had a hard time with the lack of seasons and the constant 7pm sunset. i was used to rhythms that spoke of time and movement. it was easy to lose oneself in the abyss of that sameness. 'african time' made more sense, days weren't gaining or losing minutes year round, a day was just a day 12 hours same as the one before. 

after a while, maybe a year, i grew to love it. i learned to tell time by that reliable sun in the sky- new patterns. the seasons weren't as extreme as summer to winter in new england, but we welcomed the rain after months of hot dust. 

in that podcast Martha Beck also talked about healing and to start from a place of taking a deep breath in and saying to yourself that you can allow everything in the universe to be the way it is right now in this moment, in your world, my world all the good and the bad of it, the truth of it, allow it to be. then breath out and drop your resistance to reality being as it is right now. a cycle of  breath, of allowing and surrendering, allowing and surrendering, to the moment and the moment becomes okay. 

accepting and surrendering to my life as it is right now. as 2022 begins, as we still transition to living in the USA. as we still long for the warmth and rains of africa, as we find our place in new jobs and new schools and sometimes fear and wonder about a future with a special young adult who won't leave us to go off on her own, i am called back to this moment- to accept it, drop my resistance to it- breath and it becomes okay.