It’s been a lot of hard work and a tough thing about most of my and many women’s work is that it goes unseen. It’s not building towards anything in particular, it’s not billable hours, it’s not seasonal or over. It’s continuous, seemingly invisible, sometimes lonely work.
It is constant answering and decision making without the frequent liberty of deciding the question or the topic. It is good and noble but sometimes doesn’t feel so.
I planted things today. I had the rare opportunity to get real dirt on my hands and to make something look better. Not just until the next familial human comes around but hopefully for a long time. I added beauty and was a teensy bit creative. And I uprooted some dead plants–ones I had once been excited for but watched slowly die despite my efforts to help. In one large planter, I was preparing the freshly vacated soil for a new plant, digging a hole, when I spotted a yellow piece of plastic. I touched it. It wasn’t plastic. I found three bright yellow shoots underneath the old plant’s soil, collecting energy, making a bee line for that air and sun at the surface.
I was shocked. Some rogue seeds had sprouted or an old bulb was alive. Something beautiful is beginning that was deep below the surface, under dead, disappointing plants. The two stories are unrelated except that one undergirded the other.
I left the well of dirt, with just the tip of those canary arrows showing. The new plant has been put aside while I wait to see what is happening–what may be after finally removing something that never took.
Ladies, young moms, anxiety-ridden folk, those grieving and those who wake up to a lot of Un-notoriety and Non-choices: there are things still worth waiting for. There are unexpected beauties below the grimy surface, when the soul seems shriveled and a whole uprooting and transplant seems the only option. When plan B is all lined up. In the deep burrows of loss, life can still break through. Under the weight and darkness, there is often a different story being written–as silently as your pain. Now is not forever. What needs to be pulled; what gaps need to be emptied…and left empty for a time. With the accepting of death, the creating of space, there can be spring.
Wide Places 