Gravity

Monday~December 28, 2009

I felt heavy. Heavy footed on the heavy snow. I had dropped the boys off next door. It would be their last visit (as neighbors) with our friends who are family. They would do as they usually do. They would eat lemon cookies and dip them in milk and then maybe they'd play The Lump and The Blue Monster, their made up games that are only for them and our neighbors. I was so glad they could go while I went back to packing boxes. And I was so sad it was the last time until we visit.

I couldn't stop thinking about how much our neighbors mean to us as I walked away. They have been like honest to goodness angel people, gracing our lives with their help and support and wisdom and easy going nearly daily visits with our boys that they love so much.

The tears were gravity, rolling down my face. Heavy.

I couldn't sleep the night before so the day was harder than it already was and I just felt so many things. It was exhausting, all of the lifting of heavy things and in and out and in and out of the house where we brought our babies home, saying goodbye and then trying not to think about the enormous task of unpacking in someone's old house that has the title of "new house" for us.

So my feet and my heart were heavy while I walked and breathed the crisp air, trying to stop the gravity tears so I could get back to work.

Right then the softest and fluffiest kind of snow started to fall so I stopped and watched it, lifting up on small gusts of wind and swirling, all light and defying gravity with a little help from gusts of wind.

That's what people have been doing for me, they have been the lift to my heavy, these people I love. Poof. And their gust will pick me up. We're here for that, I think. We're all plummeting so much of the time and then we swirl around and if we try, our goodness creates enough of a breeze to lift someone else higher and lighter, even if for just one very needed moment.

We give each other breaks from gravity...

I was rambling and venting and saying that I'm scared. I was saying how the unknown is just so big sometimes. I was saying that I'm fighting the fear and it's hard. Then my brother-in-law said that this move into the unknown means that we're really living because we felt a pull to move and we acted on it even though there's the inevitable unknown involved. And the way he said that, really living, made me feel less heavy.

. . .

One of my oldest friends said it best when she said that she feels good about what we're doing because we're not running from anything, we're just building something new together. I liked that. When she said it while we drove toward our new city, I held the phone a little closer and thanked her for easing my mind, giving me a gust of wind to lift me for awhile.

. . .

Last night we finished unloading the huge moving truck and I stood there so glad that people had come to help. I was a bit in awe at how fast a whole house of known things was sitting in this new foreign place. I was thankful and completely overwhelmed at the same time, looking around at what seemed to be a completely impossible task. I felt so heavy with tired and I said all of it to my Dad. Then he said that I needed to come to their house and sleep because everything looks different when you've had some sleep. You might as well start tomorrow and you might as well enjoy it because either you enjoy it or you don't.

Yes.

Lighter. I choose enjoy it.

. . .

On our last night out together before I moved to another place, my dear friend Kate told me how her boy who's eight said the most insightful and profound thing. After a long evening of getting himself into trouble for not listening and acting out, he said, I know Mom, I know. But sometimes it's like I'm fighting to stay on the ground and there's no gravity.

Yes. It feels like that always, doesn't it? Especially if we forget to focus not on ourselves so much but on other people. Like the people in my life have been doing, schlepping our things from house to house and saying the right thing at the right time.

Gravity with its push-pull, always making us fight for balance. To think straight and do right and listen and try harder to be positive.

Without stopping to see all the love and goodness, like taking a moment in the flurries, I'm gravity tears. Too heavy.

I want to get settled and then I want to remember this, the way people have been my gusts. And then I want to do a little more swirling around of my own, lifting up the gravity fighters around me.

. . .

P.S. I want to say a BIG FAT EXTRA SPECIAL thank you to my parents:

Nanny and Bapa,

You guys rock. You have been lifting us (and all of our many things) for days now (and my whole life). We love you and we thank you and we're Asher is so glad you always have gum.
Oh! And thank you for letting me use your internet until we have our very own. My brain was about to explode and it really needed a blog post. Your new computer is very nice.

Love you both so muchly,
Heath