By chance, by choice

I’ve been on the path with my husband now for 5 years, which feels more like 5 decades. A little sliver of Moon greeted us with a patient smile behind his walls of reddening clouds. The tenderness of Summer arrives at sundown, and we forget the tribulation of heat and storm to walk with easy steps in grass of the most beautiful shade. Chicory appears; an ephemeral burst upon ephemeral stalks, challenging us with her unmistakable beauty by roadside and ditch. Life is also in the spaces in between, the moments we hurry past. Like cats lingering before opened doors, the wildflowers call to attention the middle grounds, the unexpected unfulfillment of human scheming, the unpickable preciousness of living wildly. And so I’m out in dewy fields, remembering the rhythm of picking kale, remembering the patch we weeded together, when I knew that I would be his wife.

And amid the splendor I stand a bit apart, contemplating my miseries. But perhaps this is the left side of Cancer, the right being the happiness of home, of nurturing the earth in blessed motherhood, of carefree expression. I begin to wake up to falling-shorts, where I have lost the way of my potential, have turned away from paths that were so clearly lined up for me for my benefit. For fear, I believe, the usual suspect; that and wounded self-pride, what little of that still lingers in dark corners. Therefore the fiercest kind, the last kind, the most solidly wounded because it has fixed its reek to the cavern walls for so long, through so many trials.

But I am here; by choice and by fate I have made my way to this moment, imperfect as it is. The strength of human volition astounds me, all the more for understanding that it is the merest spark of a reflection of the Power that lights all Creation. By will, by choice, and by what must seem chance, a little earth living is done; ever in the direction we ourselves choose, for good or ill.