Arriving at My Own Door

"The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,"

 

As I wake earlier than the boys to prepare for the day's necessities, I find myself introspecting on Derek Walcott's words whose meaning have changed over the years in the various seasons that have come to pass in my life. 

I prepare the rice and set it on the stove. Then I sit at the kitchen table with my cup of black relishing so much the silence and stillness in our home. It allows my body, mind and heart to ease into the various comings and goings of the day.

Thoughts appear though not necessarily interconnected or perhaps they are:

I am a mother first. Always.

I chose this life.

Every departure was, is a choice.

Every coming home too.

Letting go and forgiveness is a process I have to do many, many times.

How do I imbue love, kindness and compassion in all the choices in my life when self-judgment is ever present lurking behind every corner? 

"and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you"

 The thoughts continue:

As much as I am still grieving, perhaps forever will be grieving the death of my mother, I am also grieving a different kind of death. The pandemic and all its twists and turns, is grounding me to redefine what connection is, what love is in many different forms.

Am I inherently happy? And what does happiness look like this time? 

"all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

 

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life."

The thoughts run all throughout the day as they usually do, more so at night when the dark is such a conducive backdrop for the mind's imaginings like a film projector.  But for now the rice is boiling, I put down the book, take one more sip of my morning black and adjust the heat so that the rice would nicely come to a simmer. I take my place again in our kitchen table. In a few moments, my boys would wake so I bask here in silence with only the company of my thoughts appreciating this present moment certain for now that this is what it means by arriving at my own door, sitting, and feasting on my life. 

Photo of my two beautiful boys taken 8 years ago.