Safe Place

One of the safest memories I have is sleeping outside with my Dad and sisters.  We're in heavy black cotton sleeping bags with pictures of deer with antlers on the inside, a red background. We're under the stars, we can hear the night, the trees creaking, animals walking in the woods, frogs, crickets, we can hear the creek.  The sky seems to breathe on me like a mother watching over, and I know my dad is there to protect us. I have no fear of the night.  I feel like I am cradled and warm, laying on GOD.

I don't like the sound of a room. There's a high pitch to it that I remember as a toddler, even before computers were always on and before cell phone signals, something about containing a space in walls? It's a dead sound.

There is a part of me that always misses hearing the outside, that is frightened by such unnatural silence plus refrigerator hum.  Open a window, and I feel much better.

I talked to you, Otto under a big oak tree this morning.  I was hitting the ball for Bo because he was distraught from being left outside as we went to our BNI meeting at 7am! Two hours outside by himself, this was a major deal to get through. So we ran it out. (something people should do as well after stressful situations).  

And this massive oak, with a big roundish trunk and branches swirling in a big globe around it, was listening to me.  And he heard me. (I think this one is male).  And I started to sob to feel that the earth was so tender and loving, my grief for your welled up and I felt it hard. 

To think that the same forces that make that tree wind its roots through the earth and creates the graceful pattern of its branches toward the sky, are the same forces that create our lives, the paths, the openings and closings.  Your branch was short, and it will have no branches off of it that keep going.  Who knows why. But it feels easier to know that there are forces that bind us all together, that have some sense, some beauty, we are all subject to them, every cell in our body. 

I just miss you so much. And I love you so much. I know you are there but it's harder to feel when I have the pain. I'll have to see you in the little dandelions blooming all over the grass.