PlazaJen: Passion Knit

I was locked up with several co-workers yesterday in a hotel conference room, having one of those long meetings where you chart and discuss the future of the business, review goals, all that stuff I never saw in the fine print when I took a job that put me "in charge" of things. Don't get me wrong, the process is necessary & good for getting the process of change in place, and I sat there and remembered my last boss & how I never want to become her. It's always good to stay motivated! But it still made for a very long day. And I catch myself sometimes thinking, "Huh. Is this me now? Have I become that person/boss I hated/didn't understand/resented when I was 22, or even 32?" I certainly have seen my perspective change and shift and adjust over the past few years, as life and its priorities and stuff in general become more important, less important, worth fighting over, worth letting go. I think as we get older, we get tired more easily, and that alone makes it simple to look at something and go, "Yeah. I don't want to mess with that anymore," or, "It's not worth putting anymore energy into." Prioritizing got a whole lot easier this year.

I've lost a lot this year, first and foremost being my father. I have lost some friends, lost some innocence, lost some patience, lost a bunch of belongings, lost a lot of time. I barely remember April, May or June, as if I'd been in a twilight coma, simply floating through time and space. I'm sure I could go back and read those blog entries, but I'm not ready to do that. Again, something that would require too much energy, and while I still have my sadness, I'm not trying to actively seek it out. I described the grief to a friend as being a deep slice. I don't think, in conversations with people who've survived loss a lot longer than I, it ever goes away, or even ceases to cut you to the quick at times. In my mind, it's as though a scalpel-sharp dagger pierces straight down to the bone, a fissure, a break in my emotional weft. But it knits itself shut again, and the amount of time everything is open & laid bare is shorter. The surprising part is the unexpected moments that catch you so unaware. Something so small as seeing the jar of honey in the pantry, that jar we bought from the bee lady two days after dad died, the lady who keeps her bees just north of our farm, and the lovely letter she wrote my dad when she heard of his cancer, of how in years to come she will see the bees returning from South Cedar Creek on the wind and she will think of him, and it's like my knees buckle under from the elegant, gorgeous, brutally stark beauty of the love that existed in the world and within me, for my father. And then moments later my knees unlock, the ice-pick in my heart pulls out, and I take a deep breath and continue living.

I'm just trying to be the best person I can be, and while I know I don't always succeed, the older I get, the more experiences I have, the more I understand that every summer the bees will return, they will do their marvelous dance and tell the other bees where the flowers are, and honey will be made and I will never, ever stop loving him.