Moon Garden 5/13/15

My thoughts are a bit scattered right now. It’s been a challenging week. But a good one, in many respects. Even the challenging parts.

Whenever I sit down to write something, I feel overwhelmed by all that is going on internally and externally and, since it seems probably I can’t convey it ALL…I opt to convey nothing. Or struggle to edit.

This week has been about me being a mother hen. About watching living creatures grow up so quickly under watchful and protective gaze. About nurturing and letting go.

Obviously, I’m not just talking about the baby chicks. Though it is interesting that I’m basically watching an accelerated version of all of the developmental phases from infant to adult unfold before my eyes…it’s only going slightly slower than that of the two children I have raised – one almost ready to fly the coop, and the other starting to spread his wings a bit for the first time. And, ok…I’ll quit with the chicken metaphors.

(It’s here where I should admit that I was lying in bed thinking “I should really get new curtains.” as I discerned the distinct outlines of several chickens in the water stains on the current shades. Also, when I go out I notice human behavior that reminds me of chickens.)

Fox and Crow

The kids have been bringing up the terms “success” and “failure” a lot lately. Mostly to express their opinion about their future vs. the future of their sibling. It’s strange and disconcerting that it gets brought up so much, though. I don’t remember thinking about success or failure as a measurable goal at that age. Maybe not even now. In my mind, success is a relative term. Beyond basic survival, which, really – in a civil society everyone should be able to achieve (though I know that is not the case) you are successful until you fail, and then you have to find something else to succeed at. If you are a person who at least has the means to survive, it seems like success should be define as how much access you have to the things that give you joy. Given this, I don’t see how you can even measure success comparatively with other people.

Squash

I made choices in my young adulthood that were about bringing me as much joy as possible in any given situation. Sometimes I had more control of the situations than other times. I didn’t always have long-term goals…sometimes I didn’t even have short-term goals. I had a lot of stuff to figure out. I managed to figure SOME of it out before I had kids. The rest, I’ve just sort of been winging all these years.

Pardon the pun.

Skunk,

And, you know what? I turned out ok, even though some might think some of the choices I made were regrettable. Hell, *I* think some of the choices I’ve made have been regrettable. Thankfully, most of those have been reversible and the consequences impermanent.

Externally, it’s been somewhat of a lazy weekend. I did a lot of sitting out and listening and looking. There are so many birds. So many birds. I can hear them in the yard. I brought the babies out and they seemed so tiny in the big back yard. They flocked at my feet and scratched in the dirt for bugs. It’s difficult to feel regret about any part of a life that has led to being mother hen to 5 baby chicks on a spring afternoon when it’s finally stopped raining for the first time in weeks, and everything in the garden is growing so well, without any supervision at all.

Moon Garden – 5/19/2015