the variance

Family is a confounding thing. The journey through time that each one makes can run a root deep, provide a foothold in the climb when we need it and shelter our backs when the rains become too strong. But sometimes within its winding history there are byways that separate, and we are left to navigate some of the way on our own. Often by happenstance, sometimes by choice. Its mosaic, a unique, recondite mix of this and that, made all the more allusive when we figure in the karmic tangle of it all.

This last month my baby learned to ride a bike while I was away. The special surprise was given me with a chocolate smile on a cold, dark night after a long, trying day. Her curls trailing in the shadows, the sky filled with stars. The hope and locomotion within that magic impulse infused me and I will hold it dear as I continue to hack my way with kin through a jungle of painful transition, acceptance, old age and fear. Prayer, at this time, is essential as breath as I try to sort word from action and present from past.

Life's journey does come with a compass, however, so now I must ground, suck up a super-sized inhale and reorganize my mystic Samsonite again...finding my way through- remembering it is along the sojourn where we find all the meaning, and not at the end of rainbows. And it is within this purposeful quiet...we hurt, we question, we dig. And if we own up to what we should, forgive when we think we can not, and love when there is nothing else we can do, we can resurface. That's just how it works.