Urges

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At the beginning of the year, I carved out three ideas that I would try to return to throughout the months ahead. One of these ideas sprung from an image that is repeatedly entering my consciousness: the feeling of laying in un-cut grass warmed from the day’s sun, and watching my children run down the hill. I suspect that this vision is my body’s way of calling out for rest, and a desire to connect to greater sources. It is true, I do crave both those things. But, then I wondered if the image stemmed from a deeply rooted idea from my ancestors, something they did when they needed to feel at ease, free. As I tried to define what the calling was, or where this field of grass was exactly, I was delivered a sign from the universe in the form of a dumb meme that read; you can’t rest in an unexpressed body. Alright, so it’s not rest, this is a call for rebirth: a prompt to find peace within expression. I sense obstruction in the course, but how to dislodge it, I’m not sure. Then there are moments, thank goodness, when I feel energy escaping my body and filling the space. Bouncing off you. Circling the room and falling over the furniture like I am laying it all down, looking over the barriers. And I am reminded that expression can gather momentum in an idling body and lead it to healing.

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Texting photos of my daughter in her red dress was a way to share my affection for the occasion. Knowing that these fleeting moments would be the kind of times I would want to be reminded of; nothing really happening just one girl growing, a split second, easy to miss. But this is where we are living, this is what is happening. Capture that, I think, instead of the obvious. So she can one day look back on our family albums and see herself beginning to emerge.

But texting you was also a way to say, here you are. Within her knitted dress and her stance, you can find yourself. You are woven into fragments of her, and she will forever grow a part of you, a part that never got to be. Is that what life is? A rattle of unseen urges, that engulf those of us who are living, and drive us closer to our family’s ancient journey.

Maybe, too, I was bragging, wanting recognition for what I was helping to nurture. I think back on the moments that may have shaped her path. Things we have said that could have directed her thinking. Perhaps, though, I prefer to imagine that her future is already chosen, laid out by something stronger than all of us united. It makes me wonder, then, if gut instinct is really just a gentle siren from a time when our grandmothers, or great grandmothers, felt an impulse to reveal something of themselves, and here we are just walking through time, surrendering to our deep generational desires.

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It looks like the star that arrives at my window each morning. One time Jupiter, one time a complete and bright light being placed at the tip of the pine tree in the neighbour’s garden. Time is handed to me through eight panes of glass. I drive through the village in the rain and see all the faces through my windscreen, in them I see all their families, all of their mornings, and I decide, swaying my car down the hill, that you don’t arrive on your own, you come made from layers of a thousand pieces.

One piece of me is to leave in bed with you in the morning, watching the sky turning from a blue dawn to a morning gold. Another piece, to sit at the table and watch you apply yourself to the words you need to escape and discover. Another, to run through the sun-shower that is arching over the waves and down onto the sand, tapping at the hairs on our arms. A flash of hair, a blaze of teeth, bare knees. You, with your feet in the shallows, waiting for me as I test the depths. Your green suit against the blue sky is like a plant, thriving in perfect conditions. I see you grow new leaves, here and there. And your tongue investigates new territory, while I listen to you without responding. I would like to leave a piece of myself on these dunes, so I can watch the boats come in and the father scoop his daughter on his back and the sun roll into the water, hissing into the night.

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