Migrations

The sight of a stray plastic truck on the floor makes me choke up, or the red and yellow shovel left on the ground outside, or the make-believe ice cream shop in the corner by the window. We returned home last night after taking the kids to the airport, and the house feels weirdly empty and quiet, but the clean-up will keep us busy. It’s time to reclaim and reorganize our lives, and to readjust to what passes for normal around here. The bed in which we sleep has so often been referred to as a combine harvester, I could almost imagine it moving me along the fields as I drifted into sleep. (Our grandson is weirdly enamored of rescue vehicles, farm machinery, and construction equipment, and combine harvesters are apparently the absolute pinnacle. I don’t understand any of this, but it’s all very fascinating, and I will never again glimpse a big vehicle without marveling.)

To help heal our hearts, we wisely drove south from the airport in Los Angeles to visit dear friends in Orange County instead of immediately going back home, then the next day spent an afternoon near San Diego with a cousin whose wife recently passed away. The balm of friendship never diminishes, nor does the importance of reconnecting with kin who happen to be kindred spirits.

“Death is a migration,” said our cousin, “but I realize now where she went…she is here, in me, and all around, and I can keep her alive in the things that I do.”

Migration: a resettling, a relocation, a movement from somewhere to somewhere. Life is an exploration of the here, and death an inevitable migration.

We walked along paths in a garden of cacti and succulents, and looked down upon pale houses perched randomly upon the hillsides, while the sun warmed a red tile roof, and I sipped from a tall glass of water with ice and a lemon slice.

And my heart did that thing it does, where it fills almost to bursting, and everything is so sad and so beautiful, and I am lost and found all at once.

I recalled the wisdom of the late, beloved poet and philosopher John O'Donohue:

"The more I've been thinking about it, the more it seems to me, actually, that the visible world is the first shoreline of the invisible world. And the same way I believe with the body and the soul. That actually the body is in the soul, not the soul just in the body. And that in some way the poignance of being a human being is that you are the place where the invisible becomes visible and expressive in some way."

The poignance of being human. I think I've been trying to get a handle on this all along. I like the thought that we ourselves are the very junction of invisible and visible, a corporeal glimmer of something unseen but yes. It's such a contradictory state, though, each of us a tangible manifestation of miracles but barely blundering through, acutely conscious and yet so unaware. Perhaps the poignance of being human is in experiencing all this love and pain and wonder without knowing what it means or what it meant, then promptly vanishing into what we can neither imagine or perceive.

"It's strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you."

That's another quote from O'Donohue. I like that so much I think I'm going to proclaim it as my motto. Heck, I'm tempted to change the name of this very blog to "It's Strange To Be Here." Because yes, it's amazing, all right, but also challenging, difficult, mysterious...strange.

And this brings me to perhaps my favorite of all the things John O'Donohue said, that one's identity is not equivalent to one's biography, and that "....there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there's still a sureness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary."

A place where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness and tranquility in you. How beautiful that is! It acknowledges the miracle-ness of each of us, the core and spark that we contained and are, delivered pure and beautiful from the invisible to the visible realm. (Remember, said my poet friend Dan Gerber to me once, you are the light and not the bulb.)  

I move along and settle in and watch for glimmers of understanding.

I hope I will face the next migration with grace.

We drove home on freeways past mountains splashed with orange flowers, and even high speed through a dirty windshield, they were surprisingly beautiful. Snowy mountains rose in the air like a mirage, and the sun set with outrageous extravagance, and I was filled with wonder and gratitude for the privilege of bearing witness.

Those stops and detours and the long drive home were an excellent bridge to help us transition from grandson time to our quiet form of ordinariness––which we realize is not ordinary at all.

And now I shall begin the laundry.