family: I love you

From my handfasting with Archer.
We were lucky to have Zoya Greene do the photography for us.
As you can tell, she's amazing.

This summer I went to two weddings.
One of them was my own.
The other was my cousin's.
Both of them were wonderful.

Yes, my mother's husband literally ruined (for me, my husband, and my son) the family reunion-type events that were to follow the cousin's wedding, by throwing a temper tantrum about my style of hospitality. I and my small family of three were excluded from further festivities. But he's my mother's husband, her rock, so I'm focusing on what I've learned from the experience: I'm ready for my family to start acting like the people I believed they were when I was a child. And, they are not ready. And finally: I still love them. So I'll take my lessons and move on.

I'm not really, completely moved on yet, but I'm working on it.
I have to. If I don't move forward, the depression will kill me.
And my small family isn't ready for me to go yet.

This is me, moving on.
With my small family.
And yes, with my mother.
I don't know, yet, what the mechanics of ignoring her husband's existence will look like.
But I'm giving it my best shot.

Because if I were to pay attention
- especially to his power over my place in my big family -
the depression might kill me.
And I still have work to do.
A child to raise.
A child who will always find sanctuary with me, regardless of any other human being in the world.

Moving on.
Always, moving on. 

the wind

I'm awake and the wind is blowing outside. It doesn't do that often here, sheltered as we are by the canyon and our close neighbors. I'm not used to the sound.

A moment ago, I was reading some silly romance because I couldn't sleep. It was a pleasant enough distraction. When the wind rose, my thoughts were elsewhere, and - like in a dream - I heard the wind blowing under and around my bedroom window. But that can't be, because I haven't lived in a house where the wind could wrap so completely around me since I was a teenager.

For a moment, I was back there, in my step-mother's house, feeling like the hollow particle board door was a castle wall between me and her. Like the wind was my friend where I had no others. Like the wind was the voice of the place that kept me safe, but kept me hidden.

It's a very lonely sound.

Tonight, I'm glad that my little dog Bella snuck onto my bed while I wasn't paying attention. She's not supposed to be up here, but her presence brought me back to here and now. She's cuddling with my legs, her loving little face resting on my ankle.

Her sigh is a whisper of contentment.

underworld (into the forest)

The best memories of my childhood are of being in the forest, alone.

My thoughts were more clear there than they were in any other setting at that time. Today I learned that the imagery of the forest still has the power to bring me clarity of thought, or at least to bring to a state of calm which allows for a greater degree of clarity. This state of calm is not the calm of absence, the calm of lack; it is the calm of vibrancy, of womb-like life, a symphony of souls, blanketing the forest like a mist.

There in the foothills of the Adirondacks, I found shelter in the forest; it saved me from my home.

This could be a picture of the woods surrounding my father's house.
It isn't, but it  looks exactly like it, right down to the grown-over tractor trail.

Such a strong connection to the spirits, there... as though the Underworld were closer in a forest...
It seems there are many connections between forests and the Underworld - which I'm sorta using as shorthand for a comprehensive  label describing all things on the other side of the veil. 

I remember escaping into the forest, running from the tension and the hurt; the season didn't matter, the forest always welcomed me. It hid me, sheltered me from my step-mother, who rarely left the house and wasn't "fool enough" to go walking in the woods.  

We logged those woods, as a family, every autumn. We would be finishing up right around this time of year, if we still lived there. Logging was one of the few things we ever did cooperatively. Once every few years, Dad would hire a guy to come in with his percherons and cut down the trees of a certain size. That year and the few following years, we would spend the late summer and most of autumn finding the felled trees and harvesting them. Dad wielded the chainsaw, slicing the trunks and branches down to carryable size. My step-siblings and I (often it was just my step-brother and I, as my step-sister didn't care for this work) would load the pieces into the wagon. My step-mother helped with the loading sometimes; usually she just drove the tractor. In her defense (I suppose), she did usually make my step-sister help with the unloading, once we got the wood back to the house. There, Dad or my step-brother or I would chop it down smaller with the ax, so it could fit in the wood stove we used to heat the house. We'd stack it along the wall of the house, near the back door.

One year, my father's grip slipped, and he sheared off some of the skin on his palm with the chainsaw. He went back to the house, cleaned it up and put a bandage around his hand. My step-mother insisted he go to the emergency room. So he went, and the doctor took the bandage off, cleaned it out again, put a new bandage on, told him he was lucky, and gave him some painkillers. I doubt he ever took them. That was the year we had to wait to haul in the rest of the wood, and we ended up going back in between snowfalls so we'd have enough to last til spring. Only Dad was allowed to use the chainsaw.

I liked being there in the woods. It made me feel safe even when my step-mother was there. As though the strength of the forest overpowered whatever drove her and made her cruel. In hindsight, it seemed that it was true. I have so very few memories of her being angry while we were in the woods, and so many more of her being neutral, or even pleasant, during that work. There, I could shrug off what cruelty did come; it lacked significance.

I felt more powerful in the forest. There was no need to fear. In part, I think that was because there were no walls to close me in, to trap me. There were no corners to back into. But there was  space. There were many hiding places, and I knew them well. She could barely find the trail. It was more than that, though. The forest felt sentient and beloved, an active shelter for those who loved it back.

These are the citadels, the natural cathedrals, the monasteries of the sentient Earth. Starhawk writes, "Branches are patterns of flow, of collection, concentration, and dispersal." (The Earth Path, page 188) She How many mythologies can we think of which describe trees - or a tree - as connecting two or more worlds? This site (which is interesting in it's own right) lists more than a dozen cultures with "cosmic tree" myths. The Forest, with it's dramatic seasonal cycles, has long and wide been a symbols for human cycles of life. In a place that is so alive, so long-lived, and composed of trees to touch all worlds, it's no wonder there is such a strong spiritual presence. I've come to believe that forests are places where the Underworld is unusually close to our physical world. If nothing else, their patterns of branches and roots are powerful symbols of the cycle of life and death: we flow through, collecting and dispersing as our paths lead us from one world to the next, and back, again and again, and again.

This gorge was a twenty minute drive from our farm.
It's a tourist attraction, but still one of the most spiritual places I've ever been.

~

This post is an expansion of my last Pagan Blog Project post,
"Unobtrusive magic (under the bridge)." 
Let's consider it Part 2.

~

Image sources:

First image: http://traveltips.usatoday.com/hiking-old-forge-new-york-62421.html

Second image: http://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/new-york-state-finger-lakes-us-ny-fl.htm

letter to Dad

Looking back, remembering the way you taught - so many students learned to think for themselves because of the joy you took in teaching. You influenced so many young lives for the better, I think the effect must have been exponentially Good. The light in your eyes - that light which I'm sure my mother fell in love with - never shone so bright as when you were in a classroom, talking about Plato's cave, or Aristotle's Golden Mean. I hope the memory of those times stays with you, even if all others fail.

I've come to accept that it's too late for you to step out of the cave your current wife has crafted for you. I've given up the idea of you knocking down her walls in a burst of comprehension. I have given up on us. It's in your hands, now, and I know that your hands will stay as still as they have been all these years. I miss you, and I mourn. But I'm choosing to remember your happiness, and mine, because there's nothing more I can do to bring you back. An attack on her walls would only reinforce them; my silence reinforces them further - our relationship is in your paralyzed hands. So I grieve, and in my memories I skip those times that you have been still. I remember those times your were alive, animated, teaching. You were happy, and so was I. I'm grateful for those times, and I hope they stay with you, too.