"I am loved as much as I am able to receive it" Thoreau

But my mind was on the baking.

June 22, 2010

Kitchens, the heart of the house, no kitchen, no mama. No one home. Where’s home? Blue mixing bowl, yellow batter, pancakes. Mornings were good. The smell of coffee, toast, laughter, subdued, not night time laughter. The everlasting optimism of morning. Anything is possible. You never know what a day will bring. Morning energy, rested but still softly sleepy, face fresh washed. Morning forgiveness, fresh start. Ah how many pancakes? Ask for what you want and get it. Where’s the butter? Do we have real maple syrup? Yes, yes, the answer is yes. People who are there in the morning love you. No fake social shit. Morning, light clear and revealing. What shall we do today? We need to go to the grocery store, feeding all these people food melts away like butter in the summer sun. Where’s the list? That’s the last carton of milk. We need more eggs.

“Morning, Papa, do you want some OJ?” Smiles of appreciation, eyes not lost in remembering, drowned in disappointment or fatigue. My nephews arrive with sleepy faces needing hugs. They seek out willing arms, thumb in mouth, contemplating the hubbub of getting breakfast for so many in the grandparent’s kitchen with no usual routine and familiar places to sit as we all circle around the kitchen, helping ourselves to more food, talking, sitting where ever we can. Then there is the slow building silence as people move out to run errands, work on projects, retreat to the living room to read, settle back into their own private reveries and close down the doors of interaction.

I am loved as much as I am able to receive it.

Those moments, those people are gone. Yet they remain frozen like an old movie that I can play when I choose. Nana and Granda are gone, My sister Ann’s husband, George, is gone. Thumb sucking Paul is now a six foot four inch 42 year old, his younger brother is six foot two with two small daughters. The farm is a park, the house, a visitor center. Time waits for no man. I stand in time as if it were a fast stream roaring past, legs planted deeply in rocks, leaning into the current, legs cold with the water, shoulders hot with the sun, breeze licking cool, balance swaying. The water sparkles in light moving, dancing on its surface. The light is beguiling, pulling me in, inviting me to dance, let the water roar past, let the film run lovingly in the background, let the breeze dry my tears, feel the power of the stream, the shifting boulders under my feet as the waist deep water holds me.

One summer, I haven’t told you about this, twenty years ago right after my husband left, I went on a five day horseback ride with Ann and George and another friend in Yellowstone. One night, summer sky still glowing, we walked to the stream coming from the thermal hot springs and went skinny dipping. I lay in the shallow stream, move upstream for more heat, downstream for less, feet anchored by rocks, arms floating and the sky, that big northern night sky above, changing from glow to almost dark and then the moon came up as we lay there. Walking home, the horses had turned to silhouettes, the night air cooled our water heated skin and we laughed into the quiet, heads back, wet hair down my back, body loose from the riding all day and the heat soaked night swim.

I am loved as much as I am able to receive it.

I haven’t told you that with my hearing aide I can hear things dogs can hear, or at least manmade sounds that only dogs are supposed to hear. It makes me wonder how many other things I’m not hearing, not seeing, not sensing. My spectrum is so small, so expected.

I want to stretch what I can receive. I want to carry with me, in my car, in the dentist’s chair, that river running through me with my feet anchored in stones and the light dancing, dancing on the water, in the leaves, into my heart. I want that heat that comes from deep in the earth to infuse my body so I too can dance in the light dancing in me.