Earth
I was on my way to the grocery store and the trip was overdue. No milk, no bread, two pitiful bagels left. In the produce section, I went vegetable-happy and fruit happy (peaches! pears! grapes! woohoo!) and realized that with my injury in late June, I simply haven’t been buying groceries in months — obviously Herb is off work now for a short while, so it’s back on my to-do list — he’s okay, by the way, but his knee is stiff and swollen. It could have been a lot worse. So I was on my way to the grocery store, battling horrible menstrual cramps — but walking is the best way I’ve found to make them recede — when it hit me how much I am an earth woman. I’ve been attracted to water and fire and air in various ways and I like to flirt with them and keep them in close orbit of my life, but truly, deep down (using that expression should be a clue), I am an earth person. I like soil. I need land. Oh I need the river that runs through my veins nearby as well, but most of all, I need to feel my roots and to be grounded, I need to feel life under and about my body. I’m a fighter and a taker of responsibility (even if the responsibility is not mine, if I see a lack I will fill it and give it all I’ve got, something I am thinking a lot about these days, but not considering changing, as it is at my core and I accept it and what comes with it), and I have fought myself as well, for long enough now. Redefining by simply dropping pretenses. By admitting to myself that some things will never be me, even though I can enjoy them and love them. It’s the apex of my annual cycle, taking me back to a zen-like place to find peace for the fall. Priorities shift, always, but are so clearly outlined that I am, actually, in the turmoil, finding peace. Because it doesn’t really matter that all the shitstorms in the universe converge on us, as long as we know we are living right. These days it feels like the universe is throwing at me everything I can handle — not one drop more, mind you, but not one drop less. In the past week I’ve been afraid of passing out because of exhaustion, of starting to cry (something I basically never do) and not being able to stop, of developing some instant heart condition (and this is where I stop and start to laugh at myself). And yet here I am, smiling to myself as I drink an insanely full of vitamins berry smoothie. I still haven’t slept much or well or enough. Very few things are going as well as they should in our lives. But it doesn’t. Matter. At. All. Somehow.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I have been asking questions about family history and confirming what I had always felt. Such as how much my paternal grandfather loved me. He died when I was six, but the feeling of adoration and stubborn, unlimited love he left me with has never faded. When he died, I had a horrible day and I knew he had died before anyone told me. That’s the kind of bond we already had. When he died, I told my grandmother I wish she had died instead (I was forced to apologize, but frankly my parents should have marvelled at how perspicacious I was and wondered about how deep that insight was — pretty effing deep, turns out). Granted, as an adult I understand how horrible that must have been to hear, yet I can’t deny that I have only now realized how different my life would have been, had that wonderful man not died then, had I had a chance to get to know him as a human, not only as a grandfather figure. In fact he most likely would have become a father figure, and I would still hold him as my rock. As for my other grandfather (who died when I was five… and nobody needed to tell me he’d died either: I was a grandfathers’ girl), the one who lived with us when I was very young, well, I was able to confirm that he married my grandmother (who died when I was an infant) out of love. Sounds like nothing? Oh yeah? In rural nowhere, in those days? It’s tremendous. It’s magical. And it anchors me even more to my land, my nation, my country, where my grandfathers worked like madmen to provide for their families, not knowing that in the end they wouldn’t get much time to enjoy those of us, their grandchildren, who would have understood with few words. I miss my grandfathers.
