I feel about a centimeter wide today. I confront the whole entire cosmos from under some giant’s dining room table. I sit cross-legged and weep. Tears run down my face. Where is Kipper, my dog? He died on Election Day. Because I’m here, where things are large and small, maybe death, too, is an open door into the backyard. At any minute Kipper might trot back inside. I zoom around looking for him with open joy on my face. Thank you. Life is just a giant dining room and death is simply a back door that swings back and forth often. We aren’t really interposed in some separate quadrant from those we love and miss. We’re closer than we know.
I decide to be really, really nice to this woman typing in my pajamas. “I’m sorry you lost your dog,” I tell her. “I’ll be your friend. You deserve a walk in warm sunlight; it’s about to rain and snow.”
We’ve enjoyed days and days of hot, dry golden fall. We ache for moisture, beg for mercy, especially since the map turned red on Nov. 8.
I can do this. I may be small, but I grow every day. And because I do, I might reach the table by nightfall, when a steady stream of dishes will file in and we will gather together for a feast.
Our time has gone so quickly today. Sometimes shifting is like playing flock, a game where people move shoulder to shoulder as though they are a flock of birds. Sometimes, staying connected to ourselves and each other slows us down. It’s worth it anyway.
I wash this down with tea and start again. What are we, skin cells? Why every day are we reborn pink and new, only to be sloughed off dead?
That’s what we get when we sign up for this life: A steady stream of new starts. Yet somehow all the lines weave together. This is my life, this quilt. I wrap it around me and cry, but at least I’m warmer. Thank you. I admit to not having it all wrapped up. I admit to an uncertain world that I don’t know, either. We walk around in our lives like shawls. I am old. I am Babushka. I brace my aging body against the cold.
Starvation. Rising sea levels. Hate crimes. We can do better, and I pray that we will.
And how can I join in in solidarity, put my entire weight behind the world I intend to bear?
One skin cell at a time, one opening door at a time, one small centimeter of a human growing tall enough to reach the table by nightfall (at a time) only to begin infinite and infinitesimal every day. Only the light can expand us beyond our small membranes. Only God can hold my hand wide. Only connected can our heartbeats flutter open to what’s larger within each of us, wide and loving and big enough to love it all, to embrace all of our giant selves. Then, only then, do we respect well enough to become a beacon to others on this journey hoping to find their whole way home.
I love my world, though it breaks my heart every day. Here’s happiness: Toasting its blessings with deep magenta currant wine anyway. It’s wearing the emerald green life and feeding the millions. It’s doing so while holding true to what we’ve committed to: To our daughters, to our children, to this Earth, to ourselves, and to the heart and soul to save the Earth from the gods of greed. I bow my head and give thanks. This then is happiness. To say yes to what matters most ANYWAY.
Or as Alice Walker said, resistance is the secret of joy. Resistance is to stand for what you would die for, maybe even die for it, so you, too, can begin each day anew. Pink and small and growing like crazy.
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