I've been given the gift of time this summer. Time and space and a small place to work through some things that have been nestled under my brain like the eversoslight pea that makes the princess' slumber impossible. This is the first time I've had this kind of space in over 10 years, the constancy of an infant or two and the well-worn path of life tying me close to home.
In this time, I've been tracking back over snow-glazed expanses of land looking for landmarks, broken branches, bootmarks in the snow to figure out how I've gotten to this place blank with light, somewhat foreign, white earth and cloud-embanked sky turned upside down. My inner compass has become shoddy to shot, so I stop and hunker down, try to devise a plan to lead myself out of this snowblind space. It's not all bad. It requires me to trust myself, to get back to my native skills, to remember what those I trust have taught me. It's good here, because against this blank palette my gut is returning. I am requiring myself to begin anew. The woman who was emerging from the salt and sea but a year ago now is bathed in snow, a mikvah of frost, the cold breath against warm lungs leaving me panting. I can keen and mourn here. I have to just be with myself here. I have to sit and take things as they come.
It's good. It's good. It's neither lonely nor scary nor inhospitable. It's space. And for as sterile and remote as it feels, it's beautiful. I am thankful, so thankful, just for the opportunity to breathe, to see, to wonder. I am thankful for the chance to appreciate, to reconcile, to dig back in, to shake things loose in my brain that I have stuffed away for so long. I don't fear the blankness, I revel in it. It's a reset, renewal, starting anew.
Over the next rise is that small, warm shed.
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