pieces of time

 we've moved back into our house after a renovation and i feel spoiled and extravagant every moment. but it's delicious. i now have a bathtub. in the tub my feet face north and if i scoot to the end and look west i can see the sun setting through my neighbors tree that stretches to the sky with a thick trunk curving and branches reaching without leaf cover. the way the light hits the side, the empty space before the canopy, it looks just like the great trees that top the hills in uganda. for that moment, at the foot of my tub, i am back there. the light, the memory, the extreme joy. i kept returning until the sun set. even then as the light closed out and the shadow of that tree remained, i was still held somewhere else, back in years, with a deep longing.

sitting on my porch now, listening to caroline herring. i first heard her live at eddies attic in decatur GA. it must have been 2009, i had babies at home, boys i could still pick up and hold, i had met africa but i didn't know it well, friends that are now divorced were still married. zoe was a beautiful challening mystery who took most of my oxygen. i wrote every evening under the water oaks on my back porch drinking white wine with ice cubes while my children played at my feet. 

now i live in new england. my back yard is filled with a forest of maple trees and ferns. my babies are grown and can pick me up now. africa is deep in my heart after a decade there. zoe lives nearby - she is beautiful, less mystery and i've learned to breathe. i rarely write and i don't drink wine. but i miss the writing. i'd love to hear caroline herring live again. 

i'm 55 now. it's wonderful and hard and beautiful and challenging and a mystery. time. how things change and stay the same. and the longings. 

i miss the seasons of my little people desperately but i'm so glad they are grown and i love knowing them as they grow up. i have such a longing for those days, that i know i can never have back, and i'm so grateful for where we are now in life. it's holding the tension of the opposites. i wouldn't change a thing- but i would give anything for someone to sit beside me and ask if i would rather have no arms or turtle arms. 

this is a strange season. parents are sick, or in need of care and time, young adult kids are differentiating and pulling away as they should. i'm finding myself happy, satisfied, curious and yet there is still longing. i go back to places with a song, with the light on a neighbors tree, the sound of the wind. 

there is so much to be grateful for.