Cusp of Spring Equinox

I have always found the balancing point hypnotic.

When I was a child swinging it was the point when you are swinging so high your feet are in the air resting on a cloud and for a microsecond you feel free from gravity. Of course, as a child I didn't so much think this as feel it, but the body remembers.

When we had see saws - which were planks balancing on a stump of wood,often a cutting block,- it was very important to find the sweet point where you could get the see-sawing to go for some time. Depending on who was on the other side the point changed. Sometimes you needed two children on the other side for balance. Thinking about the fun we had and the practicality we needed to make it work, it is clear there were life lessons to be gained from this which are lost on those who no longer have to improvise.

So this makes me muse about the two halves of a day which balance in length on the equinox. We long for longer days which usher in spring here in the Northern Hemisphere. We think of spring flowers, milder wind, blue skies, the shuffling off of boots, and winter coats and mittens, Easter eggs, and hope. We forget about the beauty of the crisp night stars, the diamond snow, the warmth of a fire, frost patterns, outdoor skating and skiing, the camouflaging of dead grass and harsh lines and Christmas glitter-promise.

My parents were married on March 25th, 1962. They would be celebrating 55 years of marriage together were my mother still alive. They have a little over 55 years of history together. My siblings and I were part of that, but not part of all of it. There will always be so much we do not know or understand about each of them, much less about their marriage.

So each March I think of them and how they were and how things are now: the daylight and the night. I think every marriage is always seeking a balancing point; each day as the two people acquire new experiences and new thoughts the balancing point may change. If we never think about this actively, then I think we risk losing the balance.

I have a dear aunt who is preparing to fly off into the blue sky after ten years of battling cancer. There is so much I could say about this, but only she knows her own experiences and feelings. Words have no power to express what can only be known. I know I love her and will miss her warmth and voice that is like no other. I know, like my mother's death and too many others, I will have another equinox point between the having and not-having, the light and the dark in my life. Memories of the past are on the point of balance between the light and the dark. They hold comfort and pain, laughter and tears, longing and peace.

You never outgrow the need for the balancing point.

Beginnings, endings and in between

The biggest beginning I am part of is in welcoming my grandson Remi to our lives. Though he is still just two weeks old he has already worked his way into our hearts. When I see him or hold him the feeling of love, pride and protection I have is indescribable. I have felt it twice before in this intensity with the birth of each of my daughters. My mother said upon holding her first grandchild, my daughter Samantha, that it was the same as holding your own baby. My grandbaby is a child of my heart and in his veins through my daughter flows the blood of all my ancestors, my husband's ancestors and Remi's father's ancestors. I am grateful to be so blessed with the beginning of my life as a grandmother. I look forward to the wonder of being part of his infancy and childhood and to seeing the person he will become and celebrating his successes and his wonder. He is, like all babies, a beautiful mystery to be revealed little by little. So I must thank my daughter, Samantha, and my son-in-law, Mikhail, for bringing him into this world.

Where will these feet bring him in life? 

In his mother's arms so loved.

   This, too, is the beginning of my summer holidays. I am so tired and so grateful to be on a break. There are many students I have said good-bye to-some for the summer-some maybe forever. Beginnings and endings.

As I grow older and I know more and much less. I see that there is much more of the in between in life. Beginnings and endings are not as clear cut as they once seemed. Love can be never-ending. That is when it lifts us, and holds us, maddens us, incites us, strengthens us, excites us, inspires us and ever grows and changes with the core holding us firmly anchored one to the other beyond distance earthly, in time or dimension. Love can almost end when givers grow unkind with a pain like losing limbs. At the time you do not know if you will withstand it, but you do. It leaves a scar like a knot that was once a branch of a tree. There is strength in a knothole and a beauty in its poignant ghost of a limb. At 53 I am still discovering who I am, still learning and ,hopefully, still seeing, listening, tasting, touching and feeling with the same wonder of a child. When I get overwhelmed by the suffering, the violence, the poverty, the intolerance, the injustice in the world I look for the beauty wherever it is. That takes renewed practice each day. That takes a lot of effort and determination some days. I will be old the day I stop looking and seeing and learning.   I never want to get old in the heart and mind.