7.18.16 The slow-dance of our days

Down by the river, there was mist rising from the warm water meeting up with the vestiges of cool night air. There was an almost cloudless sky, the undergrowth shoulder high. The tansy are blossoming now, in their colonies, the yellow buds like so many small suns, stretching toward light. 
As all around us, the farmers, up before dawn, harvest their corn, till, and reseed, hoping for rain. 
The crew boats are resting here, out upon the smooth river waters, at their turning point . All the women sitting in silence, the person with the megaphone quieted. Their long boats slowly drifting downstream.
A woman and man, new devotees , come round this way each morning, on new bikes , with new gloves and bike clothes and helmets , smiling their way down the path.
As Dante races about, like a happy little kid, growing braver each day, leaping into the unknown terrain of tall grasses, unpredictable land, and the delectable rustlings beneath .
Each day my self does what we do with experience, with repetition.

 I notice the small shifts, the incremental changes.
Of light, of each small seasonal shift. Of the growth cycles of plants and trees, intermingled with the impact of climate.
As we meet one day after another, the slow-dance of our days.

 

7.16.16 We might all just make lemonade

t's so easy for us to grow up with unreasonable expectations of what 'life' 'should' 

deliver unto us; sometimes the more entitled our upbringing , the more strident

 our insistence. Unless something tough takes us down early enough, that any old day 

is truly good enough. 
One of mine had a TBI at age 6. Consequent learning problems , pain, seizures. It took many years of accessing naturopathic treatments to avoid a life of hard-for-you meds, and pain and seizures, which we gradually eliminated.
But I watched as that experience of such pain and vulnerability changed them forever . Deepened them. Transformed normal kid type expectation.
Course, I'm not certain what it would have been like without all the specialists and 

tests and struggles. I'm stunned with gratitude for all the brilliant practitioners who do what the world knows nothing about, who enabled so much healing and regained ability .
But I say this because I watched them roil in the little-kid-suffering storm. Knowing 

they would never be the same again. Knowing enormous new capacities were developing. Knowing that, with some solid support, we might all just make lemonade.

 

7.18.16 It's a beautiful day for a daydream

7.18.16 Riverlove

7.18.16 The world does not favor all children

The world loves only some of our children.
The world doesn't love them for who they are.
We discovered early on exactly why the world loves some , but not all , children. 
It favors some for it's own impenetrable bias.
The world gives preference to  some children for their dominant class and racial appearance, as if it was an accomplishment.
It protects and benefits some more than others  because they have light skin, or white skin. It loves prefers some children because they have tiny noses.
The world favors some children because they are tall, slender.
Some of us are born white, born into a world which will revere us simply for that one reason, long before we have a venerable thought, action, or deed.
The ways of the world loving some children better than others, does not help them .
And harms everyone else..

7.18.16 It's the little tiny simple things

7.18.16 The way of it

I remember I was 27. Having my first baby. I remember that I'd been uncertain whether I would ever have any child at all, beg borrow or steal, no matter. It was one of those long labors, in a British Nurse-Midwives home , far up in Vermont. I remember I'd been in bed, sick, for a couple of years.
I remember, viscerally, the way of that small body, this new person, their eyes gazing at me, their warmth and weight and inimitable scent , in my arms. Their hunger. How it was to be plunged into parenthood.
On the third day, my first kid did a push-up , and looked around. It was all over, after that.

7.17.16 Just like that

Early in the morning, past the break of day

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1040448889325228/