Born!

When he was two my son napped in the wood canoe cradled within the cedar ribs and the slosh of lake to lake.  Now he is 32 and takes up the stern as we paddle some Mississippi backwaters at twilight. There is the usual changing of the guard from swallows and herons to bats and fireflies.  We ply our paddles through lotus lily pads holding water droplets cupping the last glimmer of the Western sky. A glimmer preserved offering a crystal ball to gaze into seeing where this son has taken me and where we might be going. 

Under this spell I realized that instead of feeling the satisfaction of stretching this Summer day out from dawn to dusk with my son I was trying not to believe that I had taken a wrong turn in this labyrinth of backwaters.  This was like when I learned that my son was on his way all those years ago and I felt the tightening chest of being lost. My voice stuck trying to argue, “This isn’t the way this was supposed to be.”  

Not being the way it was supposed to be is indeed the origins of this father-son: Unplanned. Unexpected. Not to be denied.  This is the swelling tide that launched our tandem canoe into this labyrinth. In that moment of feeling turned around, needing to admit to being lost, uncertain, I still feel the regret whimpering, “Why me?”  “How could I have made a wrong turn?” “We already paddled this way once now we have to cover these same miles again...in the dark!” “I’m tired I worked all day.  I should be home by now.”

It was in this rerun of our story that the Mayflies began hatching!  Out of Mississippi muddy bottoms they hatch by the guzzillions all within 24 hours to fly with such urgency, such appreciation for the moment,  lay more eggs then die. We paddled through a blizzard of frantic wing beat grazing, tickling, thunking against our faces. The shear thickness of these hatch halos pummeled our regret into giddy jubilation.  And so the reminders keep coming:  Out of frustration that this isn’t the way we planned our lives to be, we find ourselves once again in the thick of it: lost, bewildered and amazed.  Out of mud we swell from the hatch into the sultry night, fish jumping, fireflies flitting; Born!

After the Flood Comes LuLu

Even though she has no sense of direction and gets lost all the time LuLu got to Swamp Camp before me.  No straight lines make up her life. It probably helped that any lines that make it to the swamp are already broken, been breeched, too short to reach, wracked by floods into jumbled piles.  Muddy waters ooze out clans of turtle, egret, tupelo, owl, gator and what you might make of yourself.  Catfish purr through all that has fallen from the perfect grids up river. Sunk into the only sense of direction the swamp requires: Down.  The compass that guides is seized by the muck. No one really knows the way.  This is where the bluesman sings and LuLu dreams in polka dots.  Because that’s what Lu Lus do. Polka dots that come unmoored and sway in skirts dancing on rickety boat docks as dusk settles in the cypress woods gauzed in Spanish moss.

Prayer Mat

I salute the morning on a blue yoga mat I picked up at “America’s Biggest Thrift Store.” I seldom roll it up. It lays on the floor of the kitchen like a welcome mat.  Sometimes those that stop by recognize it as a yoga mat and walk around it. I was a little taken back the first time somebody tromped over it with no heed to the Kundalini, the Hatha, the Vinyassa, the aerial silks or even the hot stuff.  But now it’s let them all come. To be honest my morning prayer/stretch routine was a little feeble anyway. I distract easily. I lose track of which stretches I’ve done and which I haven’t. I worry I have early onset dementia. I try to be conscious of my breathing, but end up thinking about what I need to get done and how I’m already running late.  I fear going to an actual yoga class where I’m sure I’d be corrected for years of incorrect poses.  

Just let me do my version of child’s pose in the dusty barn boot tracks of Eli my Amish neighbor who is raising 9 children with his wife LaVina, Verna in low cut black work boots plain comes by to hang curtains I asked her to sew, Andy drops in with wet clay on the rims of his heels with his draft horse plow team of Chester, Timmy, Molly and Dolly waiting outside.  Let me receive communion as I do a chest opening pose in hay chaff that fell from the pant cuff of Ezra who stopped by to ask for a ride to an Amish farmer twenty miles over that also pulls teeth.  Let all the feet come: work boots, barefoot, dirty white socks from leaky boots, going to church shiny black. May all paths intersect on this mat. A cross roads scuffed by breath, manure, animal, plant melding into a soil that sings a song, grows a prayer, loves a neighbor.