Turning Tides

Photo By: Carrie

Luffenholtz Beach, Trinidad CA

So much waiting, contemplating, pushing down the what if’s as far as they will go so as not to talk to me anymore. I knew there would come a turning of the tides, a moment when the stagnant waters would recede making way for everything to release. Like pulling a drain from the tub that silent moment between nothing moving and the whirl of water funneling down the drain. This is where my family has found itself, for 8 months.

I was just starting to get comfortable with the lack of it all, the limbo. I found comfort in the pause. It meant I didn’t have to feel worry, fear or the ground slipping out from under me. I could move away from the unknown in my mind and just exist in this void space. I didn’t have to disguise the circles under my eyes from my boys or remind my voice to speak kindly, when the one inside was screaming for me to do anything, everything to make this all work out.

We jumped, far. I wasn’t expecting an easy landing. In some ways it was effortless and in one big way we are still shackled to where we jumped from. The chain only so long, giving the impression we have made a clean jump.

And now, there is momentum. Slowly building on the outside, I find my emotional state instantly back to the level it was when I turned down the volume this fall, loud and worried. My husband and I sense the shifting of the ground beneath our feet, we hold hands as we pass each other in the kitchen, I think just to remind one another we are holding on, together. Our vision, similar, our hopes united, our family ready to settle into this new place for good.

But (in our case uppercase letters) there are so many tiny, intricate, worrisome, magical, drowning, curious, magnified, remarkable details that must come together. They must fit, not forced together, that never ends well. They must fit, as they need to fit, in their own time with their own rhyme, and I am watching in wonder at the magnitude of their power.