Moon Rise

There is a wind advisory on the island for tonight. The night sky is clear at times and then suddenly cloudy. The moon, shy tonight, peaks out from behind clouds to show her face. The beach is showing the petticoats of her white caps as the wind picks up. The day was misty and filled with the mystery of magic and wonder that comes with mist and fog. What's around the next corner?

As this new year yawns awake, I am reminded of all the beginnings and endings we experience in this life. There are moments I am sufficed with joy and enchantment as I work the winter garden or walk down to the beach on country lanes. And then it takes me days to recover from the kind of horror that is Haiti right now. And on the small, personal scale, my mum is mending! And sometimes it's all we can do to simply be present with the little things.

So, this blustery night, I am waiting for the storm to hit, the moon to hide and the sea to come alive and dance. And for tonight, that's just enough.

Magic in the Garden

Even as the weather is changing and the nights are chilly, there is a kind of stark light in the day. Most of the trees have lost their leaves and I had begun to think all the painting fairies had gone to sleep. And perhaps they have, but something wonderful just appeared when no one was looking.

I love that life can surprise me. That the most astonishing moments are often the simplest. And the most true.

Really, I just need to pay attention.

Influenza by Any Other Name...

Today is Day Seven. What I mean by that is that it is the seventh day since the onslaught of a vicious flu known affectionately as the Swine Flu. Or, more accurately, the Seventh Day of the relapse of Swine Flu. The first round lasted five days with almost a full week off for good behavior before descending upon me again like wolves.

Day Six I would not have been able to write. Day Seven is that day where the world seems possible again. And it happens to be the first day without a fever. Hence a few cooked brain cells are making their weak and feeble way to the forefront.

Today the farmhouse is hunkering down to avoid being swept away to Oz by the gale winds that are lashing through the trees. A strong wind advisory for the island has been issued and there is not a single leaf left on the Grandmother Tree. I think that the wind snatched that fever and took it somewhere else.

I knew I was mending this morning when I woke and thought about planting bulbs.

There is something, a kind of intense clarity, that comes after an acute illness. After everything is burned away. The colors seems a bit more vivid. Decisions that had been wrestling with themselves, just seem to sort it out and a deep feeling of gratitude wraps around you like a blanket.

Granna always said it is healthiest to "burn clean" and I know she meant in terms of moods and grief and anger...but there is something about a high fever that has lasted for days. The murky daze and glaze of sweating and chilling. Of burning up. And so today, charred to my marrow, I am moving slowly through the day rediscovering my own breath, my skin so sensitized that I feel the air move around me. And somehow I feel cleaner. And rather sheer and see-through.

And alive.

Changes in Light

The clocks have fallen back. The light has shifted. Everyone has had the extra hour of sleep. The wee goblins and fairies have all trick or treated.

I love this time of year. And today is one of my dearest friend's birthday.

Which made me think about all the people who touch our lives and where would we be without them? I try and remember to be a good friend. To ring them and chat and be present and listen through loves and births and deaths and laughter and weeping. But sometimes I forget. I get too busy. I forget about myself is the real story. And when we forget ourselves, we forget those who've shaped who we are.

So today I am thinking loving thoughts for my dear Jennie's Celebration of Life. And how grateful I am to her for enriching mine.

At the Root of the Matter

I have a tendency to lift off. Granna would say I have my heads in the clouds. And she is partially right. I have my head in the clouds, in the leaves, in the blossoms, in the moonlight, at the tips of branches, in the rain...you get the idea. And when difficult things happened, when I was blanketed with grief, I would always fly away, barely aware of my feet touching the ground.

Over time I have learned to love the ground. There are a myriad of things to wonder at. New buds, dirt teeming with life, rocks, digging and planting, fallen leaves...And it isn't as if I still don't dance in the clouds, but that I've learned to dance on the earth as well.

It has everything to do with heartbreak. Which, for the record, I'm not saying is a bad thing. I can't help but be awake and open to all the unfathomable beauty of the world. And if you are paying attention, really listening and awake, your heart breaks regularly. How could it not? I believe our hearts are made to break, to burst open time and again so that it can hold more; and then some more.