Hello beautiful human,
My entire family is on a cruise in Alaska this week. I drove my kids down to my brother’s place on Wednesday the same day my parents drove in, everyone flying out together for a big adventure.
And then I drove back alone.
My 30th reunion is also happening this weekend. Facebook is full of photos of my classmates, gorgeous and growing a little grizzled around the edges (but in the most distinguished ways of course), toasting and laughing and catching up wth each other.
I’m not there either.
I don’t feel bad about either of those choices. I’m genuinely happy to get my kids’ pics from the trip, their updates. And I am so glad to see my old friends thriving and enjoying a weekend together to relive memories and make some new ones. I can be happy for all of this because I’m so comfortable knowing I made the right decision in both cases.
I think you’ll agree if I tell you where I’m at, instead: I’m cutting the grass. With scissors.
…
Which happened because the weed whacker just couldn’t take down the liongrass growing in my yard. It took one look, made a faint effort and then whined and burbled to a complete stop. The grass just chuckled.
And I needed that grass to be gone. It’s like that sometimes. We live a long time with something, knowing change will come when it’s time. And then, when we are ready to take a step, when the time has truly come, we will take it even if we have to use nothing but teeth. That day, there was for me no time for a trip to Menards or Fleet Farm to find another, bigger tool to use. The time had arrived. It was just me and the grass and the afternoon sun. And an urge as powerful as birthing a baby. The grass. would. be. gone.
Fortunately, I had scissors so I didn’t have to use my teeth. I lurched and jabbed, grabbing a handful of grass at a time to snip snip snip. Then another, and another. Even as I was going at it with a strange, fierce joy, I knew it was…odd. To say the least. At one point my mother came out and said Can’t we hire someone with a big mower to do this for you? And while I think I said something mild like no, I’m okay. I’m making progress. Inside I rose up like a giant bear roaring NO. BACK AWAY. THIS IS THE THING I MUST DO NOW.
Because it was.
I fully acknowledge this was not a completely sane choice. Certainly not rational. And this is why I am not going on cruises and why I’m staying away from reunion. Although I keep it together most days and show up as a pretty reasonable human, underneath it all I’m far, far away from normalcy, in a land of myth and archetype, irrationality and intuitive impulse. Otherwise known as: psychic and emotional healing. Like those fairy tales where someone has to sort seeds from ashes or turn straw into gold, cutting grass with scissors is a seemingly impossible and ridiculous task that makes absolutely no sense on a surface level. Why not just sweep up that mess of ash and get new seeds? Just, for the love of all that’s green, hire someone to mow it.
No. Because the point is to do the mindless, repetitive, slow but also discerning task. The point is to use our hands to make a slow, steady progress. The point is patience. I have thirty years of adult life—my entire adult life, in other words—to unravel and weave back together with new understanding. With each small snip and jab something inside me releases and stitches itself back together.
We don’t have a lot of good language to talk about emotional and psychological wounding and how to heal. We don’t have a lot of language for that kind of growth and regrowth. I’m left to reference fairy tales and the way I observe that I write myself back to fullness, wholeness and health in how my very language twists and turns and grows more complex as I recover, slowly.
Maybe I’ll be ready to go to my 35th reunion, or maybe I’ll wait til the 40th. Maybe some day I’ll go to Alaska. Right now I plant trees, flowers, vegetables one seed and start at a time. I keep writing and finding words. I cut the grass, with scissors.
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