Vulnerable today

Yesterday the weather was beautiful. 70 degrees with a blue sky and slight breeze. We went with friends to the park so the kids could ride their bikes and play on the toys. They smiled and screamed and laughed. We watched the birds on the pond--the usual ducks and Canadian geese and an unusual blue heron--as they listed about and ate and finally flew away. I was energetic and happy. I didn't need a nap. We played and read books and I looked them in the eyes and told them how much I loved them.

Today it is 38 degrees and cloudy. Even though you can't see the rain it is falling--a fine mist that you don't even realize is veiling your sight until you look down and see the ground is wet and you are wet and everything is cold. It will be snowing by noon. The spring snow is going to kill the blossoms on the fruit trees and maybe even the lilacs. This is spring in Colorado.

The weather has put me in a funk. Since the clouds hid the sunrise my body doesn't realize it's supposed to be awake. It makes me feel like a ghost. I am lonely and missing everyone today--especially and inexplicably my little sisters, the one who lives in Wisconsin and the one who died. It made me cry when I dropped my oldest off at kindergarten, although I smiled until I was alone outside the building so she wouldn't know. I feel like I'm in limbo. Like I have to will myself into reality. But I'm not sure that I want to.

Or maybe I feel like a jelly donut. Like I can't contain my being. Like there's too much going on inside me, my emotions are stuffed too tight. Whenever I look at my three year old or listen to my 1.5 year old talk my heart swells with love and I can't breathe and it feels good but it hurts too. I'm all soft and squishy with my insides oozing out of places they aren't supposed to be. It makes me a feel a little sick.

Or maybe I'm a turtle who's lost her shell. I am smaller than I ever realized I was and I'm unprotected and no matter where I go or what I do I won't ever be at home. May Swenson called this "Living Tenderly." Going without a shell is like wearing my skin inside out so the nerve endings are sticking out where the hair should be and I am reeling with the sensations.

That's what today is like. I'm gritting my teeth and taking it slow. I'm taking deep breaths and chanting my mantra (I can go placidly amid the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. Yes, it's the first line of the Desiderata. My therapist said I was the first patient she ever had who quoted poetry to her while meditating. I think she should have paid me for that visit.) I'm trying to find reasons to smile. I'm trying to find places to store my emotions, so they can cool and condense and soak back into the water table of my heart, instead of letting them boil off into the ether. That way I'll have them when I need them.