Deepening

Being a non-Facebook-user, I realize that I have made myself a bit of an anomoly in this modern age. I am someone who likes to keep in touch and be connected to loved ones. I will not use this blog post as a platform to outline my reasons for choosing not to employ the most number one, widespread modern tool for being in touch (maybe later, if you're lucky). Suffice it to say, in spite of the availibility of daily images and tidbits from loved ones' mundane lives, I prefer what has very quickly become an old-fashioned way of being. Visiting face to face. Allowing real time to lapse between those visits. The shock and impact of the passing of time, witnessing change and evolution in increments that I feel my psyche can assimilate. I already find it to be shock enough for the system to get into a car (or, god forbid, a plane) and travel at about at least 20 times my natural pace through time and space to transport myself into another world for a spell, plopping myself into someone else's life, into another culture, another climate...

I so deeply cherish my long-term relationships with loved ones, particularly my small posse of friends who have been made like sisters, through time, shared joy and grief, the witnessing of each others lives. Through sacred pacts and marked commitments. The deepening of these relationships occurs in real time, over years, like the deepening of the self toward its own truth. Sometimes the deepening is bold and rushing, like a raging mountain stream during a flash flood, the cold water cutting dramatic grooves in a ravine. Sometimes the deepening is more subtle, like the slow, invisible growth of oak roots, creeping deeper into the cool dark hidden zones of the earth which sustains the fruiting above, the years of abundance and the years of scarcity.

Julie and I made ourselves blood sisters years ago in the youth of our lady-hood, a ritual among many in our comings of age. Those days were spent walking in the rain, worshipping the purity of the magnolia blossoms, frolicking amongst the fireflies, hunting out pockets of wild places in suburban Charlotte and memorizing them with the bottoms of our bare feet, teaching each other lullabies that we would someday sing to our children. With our sacrificed drops of blood, we made silent promises to each other and to ourselves.

Now, all these moons later, I look at Julie's twin daughter and son, and I am startled awake to realize I am beholding the fruits of so much silent deepening. I see Julie to the nth power looking back at me when her daughter watches me with the same intent that her mother has so many times. I am overwhelmed by the unfolding of a life. I watch Julie, swollen with the life blood of another fruit, laugh with her children. I listen to her sing those well-practiced lullabies and feel her teaching the wonders of the fireflies. I remember all that has led to this moment. This is real time.



Me, Julie, Forest, Lily and invisible little sister