Maybe because I'm dyslexic, I sometimes think I'm 17 instead of 71. The past two weeks I have been at camp weekends with a busy week in between. Both Mondays after were scheduled in advance with extremely early mornings. For three nights running, both Fridays, both Saturdays, and both Sunday nights, I got five hours of sleep.
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, said the little engine who could. I'm not five-years- old anymore. Not even seventeen. The accumulated years and wearing out of moving parts is real, but I don't feel, ya know, old. I feel like I can still get down on the floor with the little kiddos, encouraging them to strum my guitar while they sing at campfire or at Stage Night. I feel like I can still run after the bolt-and-run girl of nine who is lighter on her toes than a gazelle even though the aftermath of her brain tumor treatment affects her balance. Or sit with a sibling whose deep feelings finally surface and need to be shared aloud. I feel like I can dance in a deep squat to hold hands with a three year old and spin around with the force of his hand slap on my palm so he feels empowered by his own strength and giggles maniacally. Camp is such fun. I won't trade it. I won't stop going, but maybe I'll make sure to have Mondays off after a family camp weekend to make time for gardening in the dear forgiving-mama-earth. I need to PULL the damned weeds as if I could pull the cancer out of little bodies and set these dear children back down on their paths in a healthy spot as if cancer never happened.
I hate cancer.
I love camp.
Today is the first day I've allowed myself to play hooky from a volunteer gig in town so I could do a bit of weeding. It's essential and cathartic. Winds are strong. Plum tree is "snowing" white petals. Humming birds are humming around the newly re-filled red glass bottle as it dances wildly in the wind, their little feet cling tightly.
Bare root roses established in two pots are thriving. Ptuhy, ptuhy, ptuhy, as my mother-in-love used to say. May they continue thriving. I'm eager to get them into the ground this coming Saturday when a friend comes to help design the garden. Fuyu persimmon tree is budding out so beautifully! The feeling inside is total JOY when I see a bare twig of a tree, which I thought for sure I killed, swell overnight along the bareness, sending out leaf buds. The pomegranate tree, too, is leafing out! Ditto the Dogwood. Yippeee for spring. Yippeee for renewal and hope and all the uplift the season brings.
Now, to vote. ugh. That'll bring me back to the deep despair of bleak winter. What are we going to do? Divisions are wider than the Grand Canyon. The democracy feels like crumbly clay, not the rock of Gibraltar. The animosity among tribes is so extreme.
Hoping Mayor Pete comes round again another year. Styer too. Someone sent an email describing a possible new cabinet that includes all the candidates... Kamala Harris, Bloomberg, and Cory Booker too. It comes close to my vision of the Dems ruling by committee. Instead of loyalty the current unprecedented POTUS demands, ('though he tweeted early on in his tenure as "oval orifice" that his landslide victory was unpresidented, which, unfortunately, many feel we are, without a president, that is), we need to represent all factions in the three-arms of our government that is supposedly of, for, and by the people.
When in the course of human interactions, one person feels above any other and those others discounted, the power differential is detrimental to the conduct of both. Groveling is not how we were meant to live. Imperious isn't either. Equal regard is my idea. Trite but true: the only time we should look down on anyone is when we're offering him a hand up.
Hope springs eternal.
Spring, we hope, is also eternally going to come back around.
May it be so.
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