Singing the Popeye Song

           Moving into a one bedroom rental has been harder on me physically, and I’m only one year older since the last year when I sold my home and moved into a bedroom suite at the Flower Farm. I had Maggie then who would use her strong arms and organized mind. She was helpful in more than many ways and I could share ideas and challenges with her. This time, I was the one doing all the organizing, with little or no input from anyone. I had to decide what I wanted, where I wanted it, and how to move it. I also had to learn how to ask for help which was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to learn. I truly began another level of the process of re-creating myself, and it was tough making all those decisions.

I’ve done so many things in the last year: bought new items, searched new pathways of thought, made new friends, tried new ways of expression.  I had to fill in as many of the gaps that had been created by the loss of friends and husband and a community of people who shared a way of life with me. I gave and packed away so many items that, as I now open each box from the storage locker, I am surprised by every other item I find: like the picture of the Hummingbird Katchina or the Dan Stolpes pen and ink renditions of the spirit animals as commemoration of Rolling Thunder and Semu Huaute. Last year, I set up my life experiences in such a way that I was forced to pursue my life without these trappings packed in cardboard boxes. I had to move along my path in a different manner.

            The image of a space suit flashes with its long life-preserving tether to a main ship. How far can a person move away from his/her core beliefs before the life line ruptures because it is stretched too far?

            On a drive with a new friend one Saturday to transport my ‘new-to-me’ washer and dryer, she asked, “What sustains you?”

I answered without hesitation, “Our Earth in all her rhythms and beauty. The energy in all that is.” I had no doubt, no reservation. Some would argue that I am not accepting or knowing or depending on “God”. If they are categorizing “God” as the fellow sitting on a cloud with a white beard and a pointy finger, I don’t accept him. What I do accept is the multifaceted way the details of each moment, day, season, year present themselves to me while I walk through my life. If I am worried, restless, anxious, sad, glad, angry, I breathe the air and drink water both with huge gulps. However much I need to be nurtured and patted on the back, I only have to stand in the sun and feel the presence of aliveness seep into my muscles and bones. The smells of whatever is blooming stop me in my tracks. I am offered blessings whenever I take the time to notice.

What I’m realizing is that I didn’t really move that far away from what I was after 33 years of living the life I lived with my husband. I’ve strengthened who I am and I am more able to exemplify the person I am in the way I want to express it. I can do my life my way instead of the way I did it as a wife and companion, mother and nurse.

As I think on it, that’s what made this move harder, not the physical effort, but the conscious attention I gave to all the details, plus the excitement and anxiety of putting my life back together for me and my beliefs. "I am what I am, I am , I am."