“Your brain is unremarkable,” my husband said. He was reviewing the MRI results. The only secret it held was that I had a deep ear infection. No pain. Just nausea, dizziness, and vertigo. Oh, and a subtle loss of hearing. My doctor treated the infection with an antibiotic and I am not sure if it is better. The vertigo is mostly gone. I still have spells of nausea. I still get dizzy. I still have near falls. But, unlike the previous few months, I catch myself.
That’s the follow-up to my last post. I didn’t want to mention I was concerned about getting MRI results without following up.
A beautiful mess.
I forgot how messy spring can be. Also, there’s no pause during spring. Everything flows from one stage to another in a dizzying flow of colors growing, bursting, and opening upward and outward.
Last year at this time, my husband was deployed to NYC due to COVID-19. I was busy tending to four virtual schoolers. We lived in a rental home with a barren backyard. The wind sometimes stirred the dry and dusty soil. I only went outside to steal quiet moments sitting on the front porch bench. I stared at the evergreen trees and the roses that bloomed nearly year-round. They anchored me.
We were in motion—still in the midst of a cross-country move. My healing of a ruptured narrative and sense of meaning had been halted. First, by our move. Then, by an emerging pandemic that sent my children home for school and whisked my husband away.
We hadn’t found a home, so I was still searching for one. I checked the apps multiple times a day. I started to doubt we’d find one. I started to daydream about moving back to the familiarity of the east coast to find a home with a large, bountiful yard.
This spring, however, we are in our new home. We’ve been here for almost 10 months. The cherry blossoms bloomed and fell. The pear tree blossoms crowned their branches and fell. Now, the wisteria chandelier along the trellis is beginning to fall. Her light fades bit by bit. The white and purple petals descend, landing like snow on my head and near my feet. They don’t melt away on the warm pavers. Over time, they shrivel up. The wind blows them along with myriad spidery spindles and other remnants of spring’s glory. They form streams of spring residue throughout the yard.
Maybe beauty is meant to be messy like spring. And in motion like spring.
Yet we seek to find beauty in the pauses and holding still. We seek to stop time. Stop wrinkles. Straighten hair. Hold hair in place. Color hair.
[ding dong]
Speaking of pauses … I stopped writing to find a mask and answer the door. The ringer of the doorbell had begun to walk away. I knew who it was even though we had never met.
“I’m ____. I wanted to thank you for saving my mail and taking it to (the realtor) for me to pick up,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I responded. “Thank you … for creating such a beautiful space.”
“The wisteria must be in full bloom,” she said. “It makes for great pictures.” (She is a photographer. I turned her darkroom into a sand tray therapy space.)
“It is. It’s beautiful.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
I told her about a stepping stone I unearthed. It had the small handprints of one of her children. I offered it to her. She decided it belonged here with the garden—the holder of those memories. I told her I’d keep it here and take care of it. She thanked me for taking care of her garden. We said goodbye.
I’ve thought about her for months. I’ve felt her spirit in the garden. I’ve explored the garden she created, and in which she left many footprints—as if it were a giant sand tray. I’ve wondered about the aspects of herself that she projected into the garden’s design, decorations, and forgotten about remnants. Now, after a brief encounter, I have a face to put with the name of the woman who created this garden, my refuge during the pandemic. It held me when I felt I was unraveling.
I imagined her younger, with darker hair rather than gray. I remind myself that she built this garden over two and a half decades. The gray hairs adorn her crown as mine are starting to. They are natural. She is as I imagined: Beauty in motion. Like her garden.
This post has taken an unimagined turn. I had so much more to say. But the tears flow and anchor me at this moment. I feel a kindred connection with her: A wild, intelligent woman who, like me, I believe is a seeker of peace and tranquility. A person who appreciates the beauty in the mess and the motion. A creative soul.
She built a garden with just enough structure and control to allow for the messiness of nature to nurture. It is strong enough to hold a drooping soul and nurturing enough to help her piece herself together again … slightly differently this time, for she is in motion.
I make meaning and believe that her stopping by and commenting about the wisteria in the backyard as I was writing about the wisteria is a message.
I’ve needed this message for a long time. It tells me I am in the write place. Oops. A typo. I won’t backspace. It’s correct. It’s the write place. The right place. The place to heal my wounds. There was another typo. I changed it because I am not sure how it fits. I wrote “heat my wounds.”
There are two writers at work. One who is saying what I consciously want to say and one who is telling me, through my subconscious, what I am needing to here. Hear! I don’t usually do this. Write here, all is right here.
God, this is messy. It’s beautiful. And so am I: Messy. Beautiful. Healing. And heating my wounds … that meaning is yet to come.