Success

Elephant shuffle

October 20, 2016

I am not doing this perfectly, you know.

Not planning out my day, and having goals, or times set aside for this thing, and that thing. I am not always doing the ONE thing before other things. Sometimes, when I should be writing here, I am cooking salmon. Poaching it in lemon juice and white wine. And then maybe I am going to the refrigerator and pulling out the bag of aging jalapenos, and cutting them open, and removing the seeds, and being too lazy to put on gloves, so I have to tell myself repeatedly, “Keep your hands out of your eyes. Hands out of the eyes.” Putting those jalapenos in the oven, and roasting them as best as I can, so we can put them on turkey burgers later in the week, a bite of hot earthiness.

So I did not have a plan for the day.  I did not sit down last night, like the productivity gurus recommend, and make a plan. Instead, after I got home from dropping off my boy at school, I went running.

Well, honestly? First, I procrastinated, just a little. It’s hard not to do that. I put the clothes in the dryer. Checked my email.But before too long, I went running. That is always a good thing. Never do I finish running and think, “I really shouldn’t have done that.  I should have stayed home and checked my Facebook feed instead.”

Here is the thing. I am moving. I am moving at an elephant pace. But I am moving.  I am a 9 on the Enneagram, if that means anything to you, and the animal of the 9 is the elephant. But here is the good news:  I am no longer a stuck elephant. I am no longer the elephant who has laid down under a tree and given up. I am an elephant who is walking:  steadily, slowly.  If no one else sees what I do here? If no one else ever cares?  Or, even worse, if people do see it and they say it is horrible?

Well. That is not fun. But it is OK. That is not a problem. That may even be a blessing.

Because the point is to show up at the page. The point is to realize that the part of me that cares about being noticed, about being liked, about success?  That this part is broken, and that if I can just notice it, and be with it, then I am free to carry on. Doing my slow elephant shuffle, making my way down the road.

Presence

The day the finches came

October 20, 2016

It was months ago. You bought a finch feeder, a mesh yellow bag full of niger seed, and hung it in the tree outside the kitchen window. Then you waited. It wouldn’t be long, you thought.  At your last house, the finches came within days.

You were wrong.  Other birds visited. Hummingbirds found the new hummingbird feeder. Stellar jays and blue jays showed up. Also, a mama deer stood on her back legs, front legs on a broken old feeder, and snuffled up all the bird seed that you put out. This was not the plan, but it was OK.  She has two babies, fawns with spots who frolic through the front flower bed, eating the tiny apples that fall on the ground.  Hurray! You think. Those bouncing apples are finally going to good use.

As the months pass, you forget about the finch feeder. It swings on the branch, high up in the tree.

Until there is a day. An ordinary September day. You are standing by the kitchen window, pouring a glass of ice tea, and there they are. Finches. Two at first, golden and bright. Later, a third.  Just like that. For months, there was an empty feeder. And then, everything changed.

The finches will be here now, as long as you keep seed in the feeders. They will share the tree with you. They will not go away again.

This is good to remember.  There are days that break your heart, and days when nothing seems like it will ever change. The same view out the same window. The same lunch bags and ice packs, water bottles and frying pans.  Days of waiting, and wondering if it matters at all.

Except it does. It all matters.  And when you least expect it, a flash of yellow comes and lights carefully on the feeder outside your window.