Falling In Love With All of It

I remember all the different kinds of years
Angry, or brokenhearted, or afraid.
I remember feeling like that
walking up the mountain along the dirt path
to my broken house on the island.
And long years of waiting in Massachusetts.
The winter walking and hot summer walking.
I finally fell in love with all of it:
dirt, night, rock and far views.
It’s strange that my heart is full
now as my desire was then.

The poem above, by Linda Gregg, is called Arriving Again and Again Without Noticing. It came to my attention this morning while I was scrolling around aimlessly, and it struck me as utterly lovely. I suppose this is because it is so close to what I have been feeling lately.

I still have a tendency to look back—my mind spits up random memories and follows no lines of logic or chronology. It is, to use a description penned by the brilliant Turkish writer Elif Shafak, “a late-night reveller who has had a few too many drinks…” But somehow I’m less haunted now. I have muffled some of the grief and regret by taking in the view that’s here in front of me, and it’s a feast of wonders. For thirty years, I have watched the rise of moon and stars, the greening and the golding of the grass, the daily progression of dawn. Here is home, it says, and you are here.

I cannot explain my good fortune, but I will not curse the trails that brought me here, and I embrace my role as witness. That girl in snow with the furtive backward glance heard murmurs of rivers beginning to flow, found warmth in the embrace of friendship and community, and recognized sorrows and fears in others that were not fundamentally different from hers, maybe common traits of humanness. Her own sad tale was slowly knit into a tapestry with stunning threads of love, and she began to understand that the story had not ended. How full she was, how she brimmed with gratitude, how wonder superseded bewilderment! Even in the flecks of mica in the road, in the glints of chrome and window panes, and the sleepy morning of a town blinking awake, there was beauty.

And here, in what may be my last winter in this particular place, the world is luminous and green. Dolphins are gleaming in the sea, raptors cruise the skies, the orchard is alive with blossoms, bees, and butterflies, and there are miracles in every view. The other day I walked with three friends, and we looked for mushrooms, some erupting from the bark of trees, others budding from piles of cow shit, here and there small cavalcades of show-offs that were gilded, round, and satiny––and all of them weird and fascinating. But that was just the micro level of our walk. In the distance, the Channel Islands were lined up crisp and blue on the horizon, and we thought maybe we’ll visit one someday, and stand on its shore looking here. Carey gave us wafers of dark chocolate filled with mint, imported from Sicily, while two exuberant dogs ran and romped and showed us how to thoroughly enjoy the world. We wandered through a long muddy canyon along a rocky creek, past oak trees graced with Spanish moss, and I felt neither young nor old, just ageless and present.

Yesterday the writing group gathered, and we read stories to one another, and Jan performed a song, and the sun was hot, and the light encircled us, and Sally brought persimmon bread. I don’t know why I get to live like this, but thank you. I accept. I’ll do my best, and I won’t give up on the hope and the trying, but, yes, in this moment, the fullness far outweighs desire.

Through furies of storms and anxious drought, the hollow caves of sleepless nights, the striving and the missing and the messages of doom…I have found my wobbly footing, and my stance. All the different kinds of years have brought me here, and all of my history breathes within me, and the saga of the world is still unfolding.

And she kept falling into it. And it was life.