The rains flood my world this week, washing the brightness, floating leaves yellow all around. I walk under dripping canopies, trees sending waves of shine through wet air, a pale golden hue whispers stillness as the leaves paint their way to the ground. It’s been surreal, beautiful and real. A rainstorm of compassion on my world in the form of many kind gestures. Some from myself, some from instructors and sisters and dearest friends. It’s a week of deeper commitment to a layer of growth not found in the halls of education but it has certainly been provoked by it.

the rain sparkles in twilight

At some point this past Sunday I faced the truth I’d been running from for 3 weeks: Statistics had to go. 4 classes after 22 years of absence from formal education is a hell of a lot to ask of someone with 3 kids and concerns for maintaining a level of health I’ve fought hard to attain and it’s not perfection by any stretch. I had not taken any other math courses since the age of 19. That’s a long time. The truth is, I had a B average in that class but the past 3 weeks left me stumped. It wasn’t sinking in and I didn’t have time to get help. I could cram and spend every spare second beating my brain around the subject but it would hurt my 3 other classes. Since I could still drop without it reflecting badly on my GPA, I took the leap. But what a painful leap. I loved that class. Oddly enough. 

Sounds like no big deal, just life, lah tee dah. But it’s a big deal for me. All of this time is a big deal. And it’s been frought with tinges of frenzy to compensate for a sense of lost time. But what a black hole that idea becomes. “Hurry up Ruth! You’ve been losing time parenting and crawling out of generational wreckage and obsessing over what to do next and LOOK AT YOU! MOVE IT.” I can be ruthless. Lost time? When I’ve been giving my energy and time to things immeasurably precious? You can’t squeeze the equivalent of two lifetimes into one. But I have a tendency to want to do that very thing. And then I feel like a freak when I can’t pull it off, sure that everyone else is far more “together” than I am.

Then I ran into my very Italian Lit. instructor. Scorpio wonder supreme. She became part of the shower of compassion this week.  I’d not done well (in my estimation anyway. it really wasn’t that bad, actually) on the last test and wanted to understand how my essay had gone so wrong. The timing of our meeting to discuss the essay was perfect. It turned out to be a rich flow of sharing life situations and encapsulated therapy. And encouragement and support in my choice to cut back. “Ruth, when I was your age and had one child it was too much! I took TWO classes.” This one 30 minute slice of pragmatic and generous aid was healing. Just watching her in class, waving her arms around and speaking her New York Italian accent is a wealth…and she’s another refugee of the worst of religion. Great simpatico sustenance in her presence.

So, a reality check via respect for limitations and a love of self’s trails and trials leading up to now has been the order of this week (including a birthday that initially started out loathesomely blah). I love to use Roots of Asia tarot and for weeks and weeks I kept getting the 10 of wands. H-e-a-v-y burdens. “you are over-doing it.” Duh, I do that! But, I usually let it crush me before I actually change things.  Not this time.

And the rains keep falling all over this world. Everything drips wet, pregnant with promise, a promise of deeper resilience in the moment whose guarantee is only of life’s transience. And immeasurable value.

On with it…(lighter load!!!)

(good luck Kristy!!!)

And soon the keyboard will be humming with the clickety clack of words piling up for homework, projects and essays. And study. I study by writing notes, then typing them and reading them out loud. Then there’s visualizing what I’m learning. Imagining it. If I can somehow connect it to something of meaning in my daily life, then I know it even more. And I don’t have to do as much writing.

Clickety Clack Homework's Back

It’s amazing what you learn about flying by the seat of your pants when you’re mothering three children and focusing on studies. Whatever else I had been clinging to for some semblance of order is . . . gone. I grab and orchestrate on the fly as much as possible and sometimes it works out.  Usually, in fact, it works out. But “works out” includes dishes left in the sink (no dishwasher!), laundry brought to the chair in the living room and…left there to be sorted and folded on the fly and mail piling up high. Oddly enough, it’s teaching me that I, too, can just let things roll without planning out every nth degree. It’s not all up to me. And I manage to get it done, regardless.

It works. I’ve marvelled at how easily I’m releasing things, rolling with the punches and somehow managing to land on my feet (withOUT falling down the stairs!). More of my stinky rotten pride is melting too. People come into my dirty home and I smile. I hug. I don’t cringe and apologize and burn up inside. Big big sigh. This is something I wanted to master. It turns out that life has mastered me a bit and instead of my having to try to overcome this particularly vain streak, it has been smashed. Some things just take a bit of brutal bashing by life’s more relentless tides. And something about unconditionally loving yourself amidst the dust bunnies and dirty laundry helps too.

But wow. To relax with family and friends, to laugh a ton and get extra hugs . . . a welcome reprieve from the whirlwind.

And it begins . . .

I’ve discovered what I can do when my back gives out and both my feet decide to rebel against the last lawn mowing frenzy. I can do a half-crawl upstairs and into bed at 2:30am after discovering not 1, not 2 but 3 errors on a Statistics project and get up and hobble to school the next day. And the next. And the next. I can get a party going for my youngest son’s birthday supreme. I can smile and agree when I’m reminded that I didn’t actually demonstrate dotting (pointillism) for my first speech and take my lumps with the compliment: “your speaking skills are off the hook!” And I can do it while passing through epic changes in my soul, leaping broad chasms with a single bound.

8 Years w/The Ev Wonder

Yes, I may sound prideful to some. If I were, I wouldn’t bother to express this. I’m detailing events that ideally (except for my son’s 8^th b’day!) should have happened at least a decade ago. I suppose it depends on whom you consult. We’d have to decide there is one path, one timeframe most perfect and then compare us all to it. I take comfort in knowing you cannot do what you cannot do any sooner than you can do, be, grow.

I appreciate Kristy’s words on her own life’s trails. Her courage. I look at all my sisters and can only say that an A+ in World Literature or having good public speaking skills is minor compared to traversing daunting paths out of layers of oppression (I use the term broadly because I believe we are oppressed by wounds of the soul, by spiritual tyranny whispering what we “should” focus on vs. what we intuit is best and and and…).

The shine has worn off the thrill of being in school but I’m more committed than ever. I’m irritated to discover that I’ve discovered what I thought I would discover in the way of an “attitude” about “education.” But I have balancing components in my mind that help me recognize how awesomely advantageous is this pursuit. And I love the opportunity to get to know some great professors and students.

So, off to catch up on Statistics homework and answer the question (for another class, of course): “What crime is truly worthy of the punishment of death?”

Wow, I think of only one and I’d probably do the dirty work of justice myself, minus any regard for the law. But it’s not a terribly unusual stance for most wolfish moms.

On with life . . .