In between
This is quite the liminal time for me, a season of transition and finding my bearings after losing them to a difficult pregnancy. As happened after Elijah’s birth, I’m shot with a surge of hope and creativity, a longing to get my hands and feet and face a mess in art and music, poetry, prose.
This time, however, I have a toddler besides the baby, with needs and frustrations and a keen sense for knowing what boundaries to push. And when. And though baby sleeps huge chunks of each day, Eli sleeps but a fraction. All my creative energy is funneling into daydreams and lists of things I only want to do, scrawled quickly in my journal. My outsides, and the tasks of my days, are not aligned just yet with the yearnings that innerly spin.
Superficially, I yearn for new clothes. Clothes that actually fit, and that bear witness to the me of today. Part of me feels silly for hating my wardrobe; it’s mostly in good shape, and provides the warmth and covering I need. Other parts, though – my inner artist and psychologist and sociologist – know that clothes that fit well and that express outwardly what one feels inwardly (freedom, rather than stodginess, for example, or confidence instead of fear) are actually part of creating reality. They matter. Balance has to be made between wanton consumption and joyless, pious, under-consumption, but given my history with the latter, I’d like some newer clothes. And I’d like to make a plea to stores everywhere to stock clothing for very tall women. Consider that shouted from rooftops.
Less superficially, I long for contemplation. Meditation. Spiritual practice. I’ve constructed and discovered the outlines of a lifestyle that enlivens my soul and questions that spur growth and connect me more deeply with others and God. It feels, though, as if such outlines don’t exist if existence implies experience of them. There’s hypocrisy in all my lofty ideals, as the me of my actual life is far more consumed with doing than being, with trying to squeeze in sleep instead of prayer, with wiping bottoms a thousand times oftener than examining life or soul.
And somewhere in between my surface and my depths, I feel like I’ve outgrown this site. I want a new design, a new focus, a different story to tell. Which layers of me do I reveal here? Which thoughts do I explore? Do I lean more toward ups and de-emphasize downs? Portray myself far more serenely than this tattered, visceral me?
Time will have to tell. Or not, as the case may be. In the meantime I’ll live the gangliness of mis-matched me’s, outers and inners askew. I’ll keep snatching moments for daydreams. Keep scrawling out my lists. Keep hoping things into glimmers of existence, and consider that prayer.
And honestly, those booties, they’ve got to be wiped.