sprout

Photo by imso gabriel on Unsplash

Today was almost summer warm, nearly unheard of in February in Ohio. This being Ohio, of course, my enjoyment of the weather was somewhat tempered by knowing that we will likely pay dearly for it in March (or April), and I cast concerned glances at the swelling buds of the apple trees as I passed them on my walk. But I couldn’t hold on to the concern for long. Face to the warming sun, I stretched my arms to either side, reveling in the spring soft wind that tugged on my shirt and ran caressing fingers through my hair. For once I was glad that it is growing out again, long enough now to feel the wind playing with it, long enough to blow into my face. Uncaring how I appeared to any watching neighbors, I closed my eyes and banked and swooped like a bird in flight. I had a sudden mad urge to strip and run squealing into the pond, as comfortable in my own skin as when I was a hippie California child who played naked in the yard nine months out of the year. I have always had a secret wish to be a small town’s “crazy woman,” but I let the urge pass with a smile. Spring fever, it’s called. Even if this is a bit early yet. I ran my fingers playfully through the needles of my favorite pine tree, bowed in greeting to the ancient apple I now affectionately address as “Grandmother.” A half dozen snow drops peeked through the barely greening grass, seeming bewildered by the brightness of the sun and the warmth of the soil. I imagined I could dive into that soil as if it were water, churn it about, urge the shoots up and up…but not yet. I think of the fat green tubers of the spring beauties that Rena and I uncovered during our Valentine’s Day paper heart hunt, a new tradition that she started all by herself this year. Almost. Almost spring. I bask in the moment, Brighid having wrestled the Cailleach’s frost-bringing staff away from the old crone of winter for the day. The now weather-worn strips of fabric we hung on the trees for Beltane last year flutter in this almost-spring breeze like a promise.

Tender, newborn plants line my kitchen windowsill. Chamomile and bergamot, pennyroyal, catnip, lemon balm, oregano, thyme, and two varieties of hot peppers. More herbs slumber in rows of pots in cardboard boxes covered with paper towels, suspended over the heating vents on the pastry racks that I temporarily repurpose during this exciting time of year. Faithfully I water and wait, wait and water. Each brave sprout a feat of resurrection, a miracle. One I get to watch happening, over and over, every year. From seed to blooming plant, to ripe harvest, to decline and slumber: this cycle I know as well as I know my own life, for it is my life. I can feel my own leaves pushing through soil, stabilized by the new roots I was unaware of growing until I found them there, grounding me as I burst out of my grave and into the sunshine. Love is the main root, with branches of understanding and appreciation. Like the card my man gave me yesterday, containing what is now my new favorite quote: “To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.” My husband has been my most faithful mourner. I could think of no better way to sum up our last year than with those words, from Heidi Priebe.

I looked up the quote today and found the rest of it.

To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they're too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.¹

Right now, this feels more like real love to me than anything else. As such, it has become my goal to show myself this kind of love, as well as the people closest to me. There is a version of me that I’m too exhausted to be anymore. There is a version of me that I have recently outgrown. There is a version of me that I regret never getting the chance to grow into. It is not my job to measure the me that I am against any of those dead versions. It is my job to honor the version of myself that is emerging, messy but alive, day by day. What a concept!

Recently my cousin invited me to read through The Loving Parent Guidebook with her. It’s “the program” literature, from Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), complete with it’s own 12 Steps. It was written for adults from dysfunctional families of any kind, whether the dysfunction was alcoholism or some other addiction or something else entirely. Reading through the introduction and first chapter I became uncomfortably aware that, far from being “too healthy for the program to have anything to offer me” (*cough*) as I’d always assumed, it was a map of the journey I had already started. And a good solid kick in the ass to keep going (trust AA for that). Each page offered words that I found myself writing down, drinking them in even as they made me just a little sick. Like:

You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself. The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past. We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.²