Pint size and growing.

 

I have been remembering  a feeling from my childhood,  one that created deep impressions on my psyche, at least that is how it appears to me now, looking back on what would have been a life not that long ago, but now is probably about half of one.  ( If you can work that out , you will know I have passed the fifty mark – just.)  What was it then, this echo of reminiscence? In a nutshell, and that is an appropriate metaphor, it is feeling small.  I am half the size of the adult in close proximity to me, and having to half walk, half run in order to keep up.  I am feeling a curious mixture of humiliation and challenge –  I can’t keep up, I know I can’ t keep up and I know I will meet with a disapproving remonstrance, and I don’t want to give in. This is a feeling that will cover me like an unwanted coat for the next thirty or so years.  Everything I ever attempt is just a little too much, somewhat out of reach.  I work in a fast paced environment that I simultaneously love and hate, I know I am good, I know I can’t keep up with the ever increasing demands.  I finish that after a decade and a bit of telling myself I won’t expire, and move on to raising a family, throwing myself into the domestic arena.  I am exhausted to my marrow.  I can’t keep up with the demands of two challenging boys and be the wife I expected to be.  Bodies fail when the essence of what you need is missing.  We are extraordinary animals, our thinking brains consider the answers lie within the rationale of the mind, but they don’t. Not all of them. Sometimes the spirit has to assert itself, and it may do this by sending messages through the gut, across the heart, inside the veins and arteries.  It may take a lifetime to understand this. I hope it doesn’t for you.

My tale?  My spirit came and invited me to make a bold change, one that would resonate through the family and friends and offer new challenges.

I did make that change and though my body never repaired fully,  my life expanded and life continues to throw out its hurdles.  The difference I can report is that I am less belittled by them. By meeting my spirit, and answering an opportunity I began to grow. I am still growing.  Sometimes that little girl that is not being seen or heard is still there.  I take her by the hand, and I show her she can keep up, or stop if she needs to.

 

Taking the hands of someone you love,
You see that are delicate cages…
Tiny birds are singing
In the secluded prairies
And in the deep valleys of the hand.

Robert Bly

 

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