Sep
3
I spent time with BOTH my boys yesterday, a glorious feeling to get caught up in their lives and just see their faces. They both have so much going on these days and of course I wish I could lovingly mom-blog all about them but they are grown adults (what! how?!) and I guess we are well past the generic revelation days of WHEW DIAPER RASH AMIRITE??
I was also very happy with the rains that came in and at one point started such a torrential downpour that I had to tromp through a giant parking lot puddle in my leather flats, dirty soaked feet aside I was glad for my parched yard. I did a fair amount of planting in the spring and several things are kind of juuuuuust hanging in there. One young dogwood tree looks like it hasn’t seen a drop of moisture since the day it was plunked in the ground despite my seemingly endless evenings of hands-on watering (next year: a soaking hose). On the other hand, the two banana plants I put in the sunny corner are going gangbusters. Boy do I love those things, a neighbor a street over has an enormous jungle-y collection of massive banana plants in their front yard and they are just so neat looking. Very interesting to see how they get cut back to nearly nothing and then re-grow each season.
I was asked how Mabel was doing on the potty training front and I absolutely jinxed myself by saying “Great actually, it’s been forever since we had an accident!” That naturally sealed my fate and she pooped AND peed on the carpet not 5 hours later. I will say that for the most part she knows the drill and from what I can understand about dachshunds, they are rarely 100 percent reliable in the shit-outside department.
In other mildly tragic news my time with Little Joe the horse is winding to an end. His owner will be bringing him home to her property at the end of September and he will be a retired guy out there, which makes me happy for him and sad for me at the same time. I’m hopeful I can come to a similar arrangement with another owner (I haven’t been in a traditional lease situation with him, but rather pay monthly for access to him two days a week) but god I will miss LJ. A school horse with the most gentle and patient heart, aside from his tendency to get spooked by things that are most decidedly not spooky (it’s a plastic BUCKET, Joe! It is just in a slightly different spot, it is not a horse-eating predator). I once heard a guy say “Little Joe, a friend to all” about him, and it’s true. I have learned and grown so much as a rider with Joe and it will be a little wrenching to say goodbye.
Nothing stays the same forever and that’s okay, or at least it has to be okay because that is the way it is.
Sep
2
Earlier this week I could smell the season shift in the air for the first time. It had been a smoky day from nearby fires (thankfully one of only a handful of truly unpleasant air quality days here in the Willamette valley, it was such a dry winter/spring I thought we’d be smoked in all summer long) and a cool breeze came in and whisked everything clean and left behind a feeling of change. Falling leaves, dropped fruit, lowered temperatures, daylight dwindling and casting new angles. It all felt good and right to me at that moment and I was glad for the feeling, because god, how I have been dreading the end of summer.
I really can’t say enough about how good this particular summer has been for me. It is a culmination of many things: the sunshine, the longer days, the warm but not sweltering weather, my suntanned skin, the joy of basking in Oregon’s beauty without bundling up. The blessed distance from divorce ground zero, a packed-full year of living on my own and all my newfound routines and habits. The way I am so much more settled in myself now after the flash-flood losses and changes of those first months. The good company I’ve had, the existing friendships that have deepened and the new people I’ve met. The ongoing pleasures of Billy and Mabel and how they have become such a funny little odd couple.
And, of course, the paddleboard. There has been something very profound about this paddleboard experience that I find hard to put into words. Maybe it’s as simple as feeling stronger physically and mentally from a hobby that requires activity and provides enjoyment and peace. But I feel like it runs deeper, the way it has built me up from the inside out.
Literally, in terms of core strength: I have new muscles that have done a world of good, improving my posture (and that alone is a Big Deal, I have always felt that pulling myself out of a droop juices my self confidence) and alleviating lower back pain. I can also dance better now! There is a sort of snakey chest-pop undulation I could never ever do before and now I can!
Also figuratively, in that I am proud of myself for taking on something brand new and being able to enjoy it on my own. I was paddling on a lake this past Sunday and when I got off the water and shlepped all my stuff to the parking lot and deflated the board with the pump and hefted everything into the trunk of my car I had a moment of WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS CAPABLE-ASS LADY JUST DOING HER THING.
Last summer I was so full of anxieties and doubts and the scariness of having my personal scaffolding getting blown to smithereens. Everything that was familiar to me and everything that felt like it made up my identity, gone. I had anticipated a slower adjustment and it all happened so fast, I had counted on certain things staying the same and nothing did.
There was a lot of turmoil and I know I did not bring my best self to the table in the face of so much change. I tried so hard to mitigate perceived damage that I likely caused more, I overshared, I felt terribly sorry for myself and so alone in my feelings.
The grace of time has led to healing and I swear that paddleboard has carried me to new internal perspectives. Every exploration is more than the waters I ride, it is a great swell of learning and rebuilding and, like … spiritual nutrition? Not in any specific religious sort of way, but rather a sense of deep connection. There is something about being sandwiched between water and sky, particularly when I lie on my back and can feel the float.
It is like knowing I actually belong in this world. It is like being held in cupped hands. It is like the scent of fall in the air this week, there is a rightness to it.
There is so much wrongness going on in our world, it can feel so overwhelming. This nightmare administration blasting us with an endless firehose of dismay, climate change rolling out inconceivable disasters on a daily basis, our country and culture crumbling away on all sides. And that’s the wide view, before I even start to focus in on my own personal heap of regrets and trials.
How dazzling it is to leave it all at the shoreline, how beautiful to be free on the waters and have only myself to contend with. My choices where to go, my decision when to leave.
Summer’s end will be bittersweet, but I will take this season with me. All of the good memories and experiences, all of the ways it has fed me. I’m standing taller now. I have better footing. I have let go of so much. I keep swallowing the small coal of courage.
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