Sweeping the front walk is a meditation I enjoy two or three times a month. It is a sweet task thanks to my friend Ellen who gifted me with the perfect hand-crafted broom from her home town in the Philippines. Ellen was my mother's care-giver for eight and a half years. She's now caring for my mother's boyfriend. The broom is fashioned of natural grass and works better than any broom I've ever had.
This day, sun warms me. Perpetual breezes cool me and make the leaves swirl in little eddies. Why sweep when it's windy? The air at the crest of this hill is rarely still. It makes me laugh when the breeze picks up my carefully aimed broom full and blows the pile of dust and leaves all over the place. My arm guides the broom's pendulum motion along the long straight walk way from the curb, or I use it like a propeller, rotating elbow and wrist, aiming to get the leaves away from the front door and off the porch. The front yard is (still, eighteen months after moving in!) covered with redwood bark. Pine needles and leaves from all types of neighborhood trees look right at home on the "brown is the new green" expanse of what once was probably lawn, but won't be for me this last quarter of my lifetime, which I'm living out during the time of advanced global warming and California's enduring drought. A mama deer and her fawns track bark bits onto the walk way when they sip at the fountain we purchased for a memorial garden for my mom after her death in 2012.
What I get to do while sweeping is riff with free-association. Oh, those California scrub oak leaves! Quercus Dumosa. Tenacious they are! They must've been Civil Rights Marchers in another life: they stick to the cement with their sharp corners and sing, "We shall not, we shall not be moved..." Not rotary arm movement nor pendulum motion convinces them otherwise. They're not interested in turning over a new leaf. Sometimes a shoe can get them to budge. Not always.
I ask myself what else clings so tenaciously.
Geckos. They have little hair-like projections on their feet and can walk on ceilings and walls and laugh while they're doing it!
Grief is similarly tenacious. Most days, I can walk around unbound by grief's odd tethers that reach forward out of the past to trip me up on occasion. Those days, I don't laugh as much as a gecko.
As I sweep this day, and laugh at how unmovable the flattened oak leaves are, I wonder what in my life is feeling this stuck. Ah. I seem to project my grief over broken homes onto my seven year old granddaughter who actually seems to be navigating her three summer homes quite elegantly. She spends time at mom's, dad's, and her grandparents's homes. Lucky me to have had her all last week to play, sort-out her book case, garden, cook, do crafty things with, and to hang out at a cool science museum one day and to close out the week with a play date with friends at a man-made swimming pond. Friday her Gran'Pun was home from camp and came along to the swimming hole.
Perhaps I can accept that her life experience is different from mine and stop worrying about her.
Just sweep the walk, Maxwell.
A curious thing happened mid-week. The Grandie, tired of garden clean-up, went inside to read on the couch. She's voraciously working her way through a thirteen volume set of chapter books called The Famous Five. I wanted to complete dead-heading the Cecile Brunner Rose bush in my granddaughter's front yard. I could see her from where I was standing on a wooden bench half covered by tall grasses. I was reaching around with clippers in hand to the back of the bush which is taller than I am. A rotten board gave way. I tipped forward, catching myself on the wooden sill of the living room window with my left hand. No harm done, but I did warn my daughter not to stand on the bench. Shortly after I finished the rose trim my friend and her seven year old grandson arrived and we drove off to Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley to spend four lovely hours.
Later that night, I realized I was missing the gold bracelet that I've been wearing nearly every day since I found it among my mother's stuff after she died. I feel watched over and connected to her when it's around my left wrist. Reviewing my day, I realized it could have fallen off at the Science Hall, or it could have fallen in the big green garden waste barrel. I had a hunch, however, and the next day, I followed it. Clearing away a large enough passage between the front window of the Grandie's house and the rose bush and huge black berry bramble, I was able to squeeze myself in there without too many pokes or scratches or catching my clothes. I sent a voice skyward asking my mom to help me find the circle of gold. No sooner had the words left my lips than the sun's reflection reached my eyes. There it was! Within reach. I gave thanks.
My granddaughter and I gave thanks also for the delicious sun-ripened blackberries we never would have been able to reach, had the bracelet not been lost and a pathway carved.
Persistent longing, or clinging to connection has some value. It spurs us on to action we might not otherwise make.
Desire and aversion are great motivators.
The Buddha was right. All our actions seem to come from longing for something to be different from the way it is.
Just keep to your sweeping meditation of the path, Maxwell, you're bound to figure out what to do next.
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