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It's something like a fire. If you've ever had one, it's a total loss. A few years ago my friend called me - her neighbors house had burned but she was new in town and didn't really know them. "What do they need?" She asked me because our house had burned when I was 19. I had been there. I would know.
"Not what you would probably think", I said. Clean white t-shirts, a package of new socks, tennis shoes, tennis shoes, food that doesn't have to be cooked, refrigerated, or prepared with utensils they no longer have. Utensils. Comb, brush, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, soap. A hug."
"You're right. I wouldn't have thought of any of that."
"I know." But I didn't know before it happened to me.
So even if this last episode wasn't exactly a fire, it was something like a fire. Catastrophic. A total loss. I had the experience of a fire - the experience of several other "like a fire's". And picking up the pieces I go. A package of clean white t-shirts, a package of socks, five pair of pajama pants on clearance for $3.00 each. It doesn't matter what it looks like, it only matters that it's functional. Hand me down shoes from that same friend with whom I had had the conversation years before......a well constructed resume....an interview with a job agency......an opportunity.....an email: "Please dress nice. You looked a little shabby when you came into our office but you're well qualified." Shabby indeed. A different job. First two pair of black pants and black shirts, non-slip black work shoes, black socks. Then five. It will take some time to fix shabby but still very qualified.
I didn't leave my mother with her suitcase, on the side of the road, with no money, in New Mexico where she knows no one. But I left. I didn't drive her there intentionally. She asked to go but not to be left. I wanted out. Out of this endless cycle of falling apart and then picking up the pieces again and again. Out of 1945. Just out. On my own.
I have lived in more cities and states than I can count. A blessing of a life in many ways but I have no roots. My extended family doesn't know me. Doesn't want to with divorce involved. People I went to school with don't remember me. Or if they do it's only a polite, vague memory. A select few know me and know me well. A friend of grade school with whom I spent every divorced weekend until her family moved away and we became pen pals. A former flame or two. They know me very well.
We were in one of those occasional black holes in life. Swirling aimlessly in an abyss with no light and no direction. One must find gravity to find direction.
My mother doesn't like her roots but she does have them. I don't like her roots either. But they are roots, of a sort. Driving down Main Street in this tiny little town we don't pass a single building that she doesn't know the owners, the workers, the managers. Not only does she know them by name. She went to school with them. Church with them. Babysat their children. Was an attendant in their wedding service. Taught them Sunday school. It was once her bliss. They knew her. She knew them.
When you leave a place with a certain feeling of anger, you want only to go back when you are on top of the world. But when you are on top of the world, you never want to go back. It matters less from above. I understand that. I feel that too. Sometimes God has other plans.
Some say the first chakra is fire. It is red. It is angry. It evokes action. It evokes change.
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