Not very creative lyrics to be sure, but they do get stuck in one’s head. Every once in a while I find myself wondering just what Mama would say if she were still on the planet interacting with me and giving me the benefit of her thoughts. I think she would probably urge calm on my part: it has been a day of bouncing around from one thing to the next trying to create some semblance of order from the chaos. Yesterday the movers deposited dozens of boxes, furniture, gardening tools and a wide variety of paraphernalia from various phases of my life, from relatively recent acquisitions to pieces of furniture that belonged to my mother and is still stained and antiqued in the original drab green color she painted it with more years ago than I care to remember. (What would Mama say about that I wonder?)
I spent several hours yesterday unpacking several kitchen cartons and locating important things like my bed linens. I was determined to create a sense of homeyness in my bedroom even if it existed nowhere else in the house. Mama used to say, “A made up bed is like an oasis of clean in an otherwise messy room.” I used to say that to my kids as well, but it never seemed to have much of an impact on them. Still at the end of a long day yesterday that commenced with being awakened by the burglar alarm going off in my sister’s house, dogs barking, and general mayhem, it was with a sense of exhausted relief that I dragged myself into my bedroom in my new house and sighed at the oasis of clean that greeted me. I sank gratefully into bed last night, writing and posting this blog on my phone for the second time in as many weeks.
An Oasis of Clean...
Tonight I am sitting at my fully assembled desk in my home office working on this blog and bouncing back and forth between other things I need to do as they cross my mind. I’m sure that if Mama has been watching my activities from wherever she hangs out these days she would shake her head gently and invite me to take some slow, deep breaths. In addition to a general sense of overwhelm at all of the physical chaos in my house, I found myself feeling a bit emotionally chaotic for the first time since I closed the door on my condo in California ten days ago. I even shed a tear or two today, though it was nothing like the meltdowns I’d have on a semi-occasional basis over the last year. I realize that I am now undoing everything I spent so many weeks doing–packing up my possessions, canceling utilities and other local services, attending to myriad details associated with leaving a place. Now I am turning around unpacking and starting them all up again.
Perhaps that’s what got to me–that feeling of starting all over again…again, of reassembling my life along with my furniture. I am experiencing what a friend called letting go and letting come, an ebb and flow of loss and attainment. From simple things like the call of the wild turkeys as they paraded through the parking lot at the condo–let go, let go–to my first glimpse of a Northern Cardinal flitting from a tree in my new back yard–let come, let come. I am in the midst of another transition in a period of my life that has been full of transition and change. It makes sense that the occasional storm will rumble through my heart offering release. I’m overdue most likely and I suspect a storm or two will blow through some time soon. There are many good things that I am looking forward to experiencing in the days, weeks, and months ahead as I fully embrace my new life and as my what’s next becomes my what is.
I am grateful for the awareness of the letting go and letting come. It feels appropriate for the season of the year. Autumn is a time for reflection, for gathering in and harvesting, for winding down in preparation for the quiet hibernation time of winter. After a wild and riotous summer (with many rides on Mephistopheles the mechanical bull…remember him?) a little quiet will be quite welcome. I still have a lot to do to get my home into some semblance of order, but I have plenty of time and no pressure to hurry it. I am fully embracing the old saying that “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and allowing myself whatever time it might take me to begin to build my own little place into a home for me and my four-legged sidekick. Each of us has adjustments we’ll need to make. I’m confident that each of us is more than up to the task. Mama said there’ll be days like this. Mama was right.
