Take it to the woods

Take it to the woods.

That’s what I know.

When in doubt we take it to the woods. I just know this growing up. I would never know what specifically was going on but we would pack up and head out to the woods.

As a “grown up” I’m learning this is where I go to listen to myself. To tell myself to be quiet so I can hear what’s outside of myself. So I can hear what’s inside of myself.

Listen. To the birds. To the water. Can you hear water? Listen to the squeak of the trees as they move. Listen to the sound of your feet hitting the ground.

Smell the air. What do you smell? Air? Earth? Dirt? What?

Feel the sun, the rain, snow, wind.

Maybe even taste the sweat on your lips.

Listen close as you move and work your muscles and body. What do they need? Food? Are you drinking enough water? Do you have enough water? Where can you get water next?

Should you stop and rest? Isn’t that giving up? No it’s resting?

The loudest crash I’ve ever heard was just heard right now. I don’t know if it was an accident on the interstate, someone tossing something in the trash, or an airplane explosion.

Anyway, I tell my daughter we are connecting to nature. She says. “What does that mean?”

It means get in touch with yourself, get close to yourself. This is where you can tell yourself what to do. To listen to yourself. To find control of yourself. To imagine the impossible and the imaginable.

This is strange advice for a small child yet the most important time to give advice to a small child. While the sponge is sponging. Absorbing information. Now is the time to fill the sponge of a mind with things that someday can be rung out and accessed when it’s needed the most. Get the mind full of things to know to use again later. What things? That’s your choice. What are your values? Goals? What type of life do you want to leave for them?

There is more to the woods than what you see it’s what you feel coming out. It’s that feeling that makes you small again. That feeling that there is so much more than you. You are a speck, a dust, a little tiny grain.

Not that I have a feeling I’m bigger than everything else, actually yes that’s it. I want everyone to be in control of themselves. I don’t want to personally do it or control it I want them to. It’s worse. I do. I start to feel I’m bigger than what’s going on. That I’m not a speck of dust I am a boulder of them. I’m too big. I’m too worried. Too much for even myself. It is often no wonder I’m on my own. I’m not just enough I’m usually too much.

Today I’m ringing my sponge out. I’m ringing it out of the things absorbed years ago to get me through the things now. My mind was filled with useful and useless information for later use. Except algebra. I didn’t absorb it. It’s not part of any sponging done.

I have no attention span today. It’s gone with the wind. I would like it back but I’m busy coping by apparently not being focused today. The quicker I move from thing one to thing two the less I think of the things. Avoidance can be an excellent coping skill if properly coped with in itself. I do not want to think of my dad gone forever and I do not want to think of the feared world.

Our what’s to come is always an uncertainty so why is this so much different? Is it the desire to control an outcome out of our control? We will likely never know what would have happened had this or that happened or didn’t. I understand there are rules and reasons. Trust me. I have so many for myself that the added rules they want to enforce are lost. I’m responsible for myself. I wash my hands when I think I’m supposed to. I cover my coughs. I avoid people like a plague before people were plagued. It’s what I do best.

Avoid.

Keep as busy as possible physically so I’m not thinking of the emotional aspects of life that I don’t get a real say in. My future was and is always unpredictable no matter what coarse of action is laid out for me to follow. It’s just a new uncertainty is all. The quicker I accept this the quicker I can get back to being packed full of my own fears. Let the rest of the world be afraid without me.

I’m a social distancing nightmare. never before have I wanted so badly to cuddle. To lean into someone, to slow dance, to cry on a shoulder, to be held. I don’t even have these things as memories really anyway so I’m not craving something missing I’m craving something I’ve never had that now I’m told I can’t. Like a child. The more I’m told not the more I hear yes. The more I look through the loop holes for a hinge of yes. Was that really no? I don’t do these things well under normal circumstances. Why now? Because I have had a significant loss and feel…loss. Does a slow dance help? Or to be held. Does it matter who it is? Can I feel comfort from just my librarian hugging me? Although right now I can’t since I’m not even sure if she has a job to do. Maybe she is loving it. No one messing up her catalogued books and chatting in the isles of stories. Why am I thinking of my librarian? Because I miss her.

I’ve derailed. It’s the flighty-ness today. The lack of routine and the skills needed to focus. Or the wiring? I am still being trained to focus. I can hyper focus. I have some things that I can do really well that seem like I am the most focused put together woman. Like a backhoe. Or any equipment. Bucket trucks and lifts, saws. I have the focus for precision. For moves that have to be. Like a good cut or a dig close to electric lines. Elevate the risk and I only become more precise. But not focused. Not put together.

Take it to the woods is not working. It’s just not long enough. I need days there for something as big as losing my father.

It took days the last time I lost a person who was supposed to stay with me forever. Which isn’t that long. He couldn’t make it? I was too much and not enough all at once. The only thing that really bothers me today is that I was put in a place to break a promise. To be the one to leave to find my value again. I don’t break promises. This one maybe was never actually made. It’s the only thing I can tell myself to feel like I didn’t do wrong.

That’s ancient history. A story I own but may never tell. But I own it.

I have to keep going more often is the plan. Keep loosening the strings upstairs. I can feel it and see it. A day of flight isn’t a waste. It was a way to make it through the day. Avoid the pain. The sponge rang out and just wasn’t enough. It will absorb again. It always does. That’s why I keep going. It’s a reminder to myself I have it in me still to take it to the woods. To keep taking it there and leave my footprints and take my fully saturated mind full of quiet.

This is the most scrambled I have felt in a long time. I feel like I’m failing at something and I can’t figure out what exactly it is yet. Because I eat a lot of take out, make my bed a few times less, care less about how I look and never did anyway so its even less, dehydrate, ate food once off the floor in the middle of a global pandemic, ate beef reheated twice, and I binge watch Gilmore girls. I feel like I’m not going like I’m supposed to but I also don’t know how to go like I’m supposed to yet without my dad. Take it to the woods is what he would say. In his own way. By just taking us and never even saying it. We just knew that’s what to do.