lost things

Some connected bits from last week's journaling. Here's to sharing….

Sunday:  Her first loose tooth still wasn't out, and the new tooth was coming up behind it - shark teeth, they're called.  I googled, I worried, I wondered if we should just give it a tug.  So I wiggled a little too much.  "My tooth just isn't ready, Mommy!"

Tuesday:  It was a warm fall day, 54 degrees. Standing over my sink, warm water on my hands, staring out the open window, crying, I tried to imagine how to let go of of a chapter in my life that is overdue for release.  Then I look up to the last holdout tree in the yard as a hundred or so leaves fall and are blown through the air, though many more stay put.  "It will fall away when it's ready, a little at a time, like the leaves, like her tooth. New growth comes, old nerves deaden, and the old just falls away...
…This is how,"  my mind answered.

Wednesday:  I awoke from a dream in which I was listening to "This Woman's Work", by Kate Bush.  In my dream, the song echoed a longing to reclaim unsavored moments from my girls' early years.  In the dream the girls were several years older than they actually are.  I awoke to her patting my head, staring at me with those blue circle eyes, having climbed into my bed.  She was still six…..felt like going back to a time lost.  I savored every moment that day (brushing their hair by the kitchen table stands out most now), knowing to ride the emotional wave (the gift) of the dream. knowing all too well after many such lingering dreams that the feeling would fade by week's or even by day's end…..

So I savored, ditched our lesson plans and took the children to the museum to see minerals and gemstones. We saw a pair of Marie Antoinette's earrings. huge diamonds. The light would hit them and we'd almost have to look away. In the evening, as they slept, my eyes welled up with tenderness. The tears held the shape of my eyes for a moment before falling.

Friday:  Another dream - I'm having a ceremonial celebration in a building from my childhood, a building where a very difficult and defining chapter for my family started, a chapter that would echo, though we couldn't consciously hear it, throughout the rest of our time together, right through the deaths of my parents.  This was the building, in our very small town, where my father lost his very public job.  I realize upon waking that the celebration in my dream is alchemy... not so mysterious, pretty simple.
I finally let go. for all of us.

Sunday:  "I'm like Marie Antoinette's earrings - my feelings just burst out of me, like those bright sparkle rays," she said, crying.   I couldn't think of a better comparison for my daughter who, having just lost her first baby tooth (it fell out shortly after dinner, by week's end), had sobbed for a half hour.  "I'll never do a day with this tooth in my mouth again. You said it was my first tooth when I was a baby, Mommy."
She cries some more and then, "I think I'll always be this way… you know, like how when something changes it feels a little bit happy but also a little bit sad to me. and that's okay with me."  She cried hard into my chest one last time, before she licked her salty tears, remarking with surprise and delight at how tasty she found them, even though she hadn't at all liked the taste of the ocean when it splashed her in the face last summer. Then she remembered my old tooth fairy pillow tucked away for her in the closet and made a run for it.
"This is how," my mind answered.

 The tooth is gone. That tree is bare, covered in our first snow.  I've shed wounds so old I'd forgotten them, until I couldn't.  And after much internal moving and shaking, I've started a long movement that begins with quiet, patience and trust.
Trust - so hard for me. my biggest lesson maybe.

This week I became a time traveler. In a single moment, and there have been many of them, my present is both a salve for a weary past and a beautiful token for a nostalgic future, where too many of these moments with young children lay behind me, where all of this soul searching is less marked... more settled (it's messy, but it's magic, after all).  The gifts from my dreams are lingering, but they're starting to fade….. by week's end.