Workings (Momentum)

Went out in irritation tonight, a disagreeable evening with my husband borne of his afternoon spent dealing with the hurtful caretaker of one of his charges. Her energy lingered in his memory, souring our time together.

On my way out, I again dismissed my habitual crutch of limiting my time outside with a timer. Walked down into the yard, found myself setting my sights on the dirt road behind our house that links our family's homestead together. I usually don't stray far into the back yard these days, and I don't know that I've ever left our yard during a sit, but tonight there was no question. I needed to walk. Strode briskly up the driveway, across yards in the dark beside the trees, and back down. Walked straight down to the main road, which we never walk on for concern of bodily injury, as car fly by at 60 miles per hour. But it was night, no cars approaching down the long straightaway, so I crossed the road. I realized through the course of this walk that I have been living within confines, keeping routine paths that only strayed within the tight bounds of my daily visits: to the coop, the garden, the sandbox, and paths to the houses. Tonight there were no such walls, and I seemed to be exploring the land around our house anew. Instead of our house, instead of the glowing bay window showing my husband at his painting inside, being the anchor for my time outside, the place I am simply waiting to return to, tonight I was freed entirely to go wherever I would go, no sense of inhibition from property lines, from my usual sense of road safety, from the tug to return indoors to my habits, habits, blind habits.

On the other side of the darkened street, I greeted a young larch that stands there, and which I have often appreciated and admired. I walked up the street, looking at houses I normally only see from the car at some speed. I felt the potential for neighborhood, despite the barrier of the roadway on which we live.

I discovered a grand, tall tree not four houses down from mine, towering over a little side street. Leaves thick and leathery in the dark, it rustled like its own forest in the breeze. I greeted it.

Turned back to home, passed by our house at the call to continue moving, and walked up and around the yards again. Paused in the driveway, the moon in her fullness looking down from beyond the clouds, calling me to stop and be with her. She was like an eye within the shapes of the passing clouds, looking down over her family, her charges. I've been reading Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, full of honor for the work of the lives of women: childbearing and loss, infertility, cooking, loving, raising families, supporting one another, midwifery and healing. Tonight, I saw the moon through the eyes of the story, which echoed what we know of many of our human cultures - the moon as a primal force in our lives, on our bodies. A mother watching over us, an anchor for us into eternity. I knelt down, opened my arms to her, welcoming her more deeply into my life, into my workings. The baby wriggled sleepily in my belly.

While the honor of the midwifery trade is powerful in Diamant's story - and I feel deep gratitude to think of how many women are led into this profession through the influence of her book - it is the work with herbs that has called me, and that spoke to me loudly tonight. As clear as was the directive last night to begin my work in sharing fertility awareness with women, tonight's was a deeper tug, a much more encompassing sense of my potential path, should I choose to take it up.

I have, for some years now, thought that if I ever find my way into a career of sorts, I would hope that it be one that is essential. One which, should our people ever find ourselves thrown out of our comfy universe back into a life from and of the earth (whether from war, flooding, civil unrest, etc), would be work that would help to sustain us. Trapping, cooking, healing in all its forms, midwifery, carpentry, leadership, wisdom. Many skills would aid in survival. Healing with herbs and food, which I have an innate interest in, certainly would have a place.

Walked on through the yards, feeling and knowing myself as I have not for years, an almost forgotten quality in myself - competence. I knew tonight, taking and giving myself solitude, that I have it in me to be a healer. When I rush myself from one task to another, when I deny myself and am denied by circumstances the grounding influence of solitude, I lose touch with my own strength, my fortitude, my ability to be certain of anything other than my own weaknesses. But tonight, in the dark with the moon as my only companion, I felt I was reaching into the depths of my memories of who I have been in this life, and found that, given the space and time, I have the same confidence in me that I knew ages ago, in another lifetime. The same surety that I can accomplish my purpose.

As I returned to our house down the driveway, my two dogs - the one who was lost to us last year, and my childhood dog, dead many years ago - trotted along beside me.