Drying My Wings

The list is long.

I'm getting ready to leave my mother's house and head home after these threshold weeks. It feels like a new world that needs new maps. So I'm not sure what to expect. What to find. How I will be with all of it. These weeks have been a chrysalis and I have come completely undone. I know the next step is to break the seam and emerge. Dry my wings. Fly. 

From flower to flower. Gathering nectar and pollen to nourish and create.

It's the right season for it.

The moisture hangs heavy on the green in my mother's garden. Flowers that were coming into blossom when I arrived are spent. Peony. Azalea. Rhododendron. Mountain laurel. Even the first blooming of roses is spent. But there will be more. The spiderwort continues to bloom. When I come next week there may be hydrangea. I would like to see one more blossoming of Mom's hydrangea here. 

There are many lists, it seems. Not just the one that lets me know I've done everything I need to do before I get in the car and drive away.

Mom always stood at the back door, waving and calling, "I love you!" as we drove away. 

And if I am truthful, I will admit that each time I went in these last years, I took a long look just in case it would be the last time I would see her standing there.  And the last time was. The last time. That was April 29. Another Friday.

I drove away, waving to my mother who was standing on the threshold of her house. Three weeks later I held her hand as she stood on the threshold of life and death. Today I'll cross the threshold of the house again for the drive back home and the threshold will be empty for the first time when I look back. I'll cross the threshold at home and everything will be different there too. These days of threshold crossings leave me so much to reflect on. I've felt cocooned here, cushioned a bit from it all.

I notice that when I use phrases like "it all," I've hit my edge and it's time to lay down the work for the day. Tomorrow I'll be writing from a different place, with a different view, at a different table. My most familiar writing spot. 

But I wonder as I sit here today in the place I always considered a change-of-scenery during these writing projects, whether that will be a world-turned-upside-down too.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice.

Katherine Cartwright has been been blogging since 2012 and each day brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.