I am awake. My mind and body are restless. My eyes are awake. They are staring into the darkness. Everyone is asleep tonight – but me. If there is anyone out there who is not asleep, I say, they darned well oughta be. I’ll keep watch on this hour. I don’t mind, I reckon.
My
bed, separated by a nightstand, is situated next to an open window. The air outside is briskly cool but it feels
good. The sound of quietness can be
heard for miles. I put the blanket next
to my face in an attempt to reassure myself that everything is going to be
okay, everything will be fine.
My mind wanders over to the place that I call my home-away-from-home. It’s in a cabin that is situated on a hill in the small country town of Moravian Falls, North Carolina. It’s beautiful there. It’s God’s country. When God created them there back woods, He done threw away the mold. Yes He did. There is no other place like it in the whole wide world. I swear.
Now, at night, you see, you can hear the babbling creek below. If it’s a breezy night, you can just hear the leaves rustle/wrestle around in their own little playground – whether they’re on the ground or up in the tree(s). And the trees there are big. Real big. They’re friendly trees. You can hug ‘em and they hug you right back. But, seriously though, I wouldn’t want to go and make even one of them mad or anything. Now then, if it’s a stormy night, the show gets even better. The thunder there in North Carolina doesn’t merely “clap,” – oh, no, no, no, it roars. You can feel it in vibrate into your chest. Really. The lightening produces its own skylight production. It’s like a dramatic play and ballet mixed in together. The rain is the accompaniment. It pounds hard on top of the roof in a melodramatic kind of way. The feeling is actually one of almost exuberance. No, not “almost.” It’s exuberant, indeed. The air is different on my mountain, too. It’s fresh. It’s clean, not recycled. Organic.
There
is a deck around my cabin. It’s a lovely
deck and, best of all, it’s mine.
Someone put a hanging porch swing up for my leisure for which I am ever most
grateful for. In the mornings, I brew my
coffee, take it out on the deck, sit in the swing and talk to the most
delicious variety of birds there are out there in the woods. No, I’m not crazy. Well, maybe I am. I’m telling you that, when I whistle at my
forest friends they, in turn, whistle back – with the same melody – but they
just do it better than I do. They’re
birds. While I whistle, I can’t help but
to be in awe of the giant trees that are just within my reach and surround the
property. And, above the ginormous trees
is the blue sky in all of its glory. So,
I greet the trees and the up-above skies, pray a prayer and sip on my java some
more. I’m the happiest there at my home-away-from-home
than I ever have been in my life. Truly. It’s my sanctuary. One could conclude (as I do) that it is also
my sanity. I feel a sense of “persona” there.
I feel a sense of purpose there.
No city life. Pure home-grown country. I feel “grounded” there. No hustle or bustle, no pushing or
shoving. Nobody is really ever in a
hurry there unless one is either late for supper or there’s a “Black Friday”
sale happening the day after Thanksgiving -- in which case, there might be a
rush and there might be some shoving and nudging going on. I don’t know.
But you can be rest assured, however, that I won’t be late for supper
there and I won’t be hitting the after-Thanksgiving sale(s). I can Google Amazon (if I can get a
connection) for those kinds of things (and I do have “connections” there on my
sweet mountain in my most treasured cabin).
Clock: 2:51 a.m.
Back
to reality on Sycamore Road, my “home-in-home”.
I
wrestle with the covers and fuss with the blanket in an attempt to comfort myself
/ reassure myself that everything is going to be okay and everything is going
to be fine.
Everything is not fine. Everything is not okay. I don’t feel good. I am certainly not myself. I looked in the mirror earlier and I realized that, while the reflection looked somewhat familiar, the person I saw looking back at me wasn’t really me at all. Now, c’mon, this is not a simply a case of “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall” here. Mirrors don’t lie. People do. (Don’t really know why I put in there, “People do.” It just looks important up there next to “Mirrors don’t lie.” It fits. Well, it’s what came out of my mind and onto this paper so I’m sticking with it. It fits, I tell you. And, I say it’s the truth, after all.)
I’m
getting older now. I can’t count the wrinkles on my face anymore – I’m
outnumbered. I have “old people” skin on
my arms. No short sleeves for me. I am
outnumbered by my hair follicles, too. I
really love my wigs, though – they keep my head warm. I feel naked without them
but you can’t sleep in them or even snooze in them. I was told not to so, therefore, I don’t. I
think I’ll invest in some head scarves.
Yes, that’s what I will do. Yeah, that’s a great idea. Fancy ones.
Better yet, I’ll find someone who can sew me up some. Fancy ones, of course. My eyes have grown weary and puffy bags lay
beneath their pupils mimicking uneven lumpy cotton balls. My body aches from head-to-toe. I try so to hide behind the truth in order to
protect those that love me. I think I do
a bang-up, fooling, kind of good job at masking. (Masking didn’t happen overnight – it has
taken years of practice.) But the real
honest-to-Gawd truth is that I cannot hide any of it or mask any of it from
myself. I wish I could.
Perhaps
all of this stuff about the wrinkles and bags and blah, blah, blah sound a
little vain, huh? Yes, probably. Yes, maybe. I am, just in this moment, seeing scattered
pages of my yester-youth laying tattered at my feet. Remember, it’s just in the
moment.
In spite of it all, I do have a spirit of love for myself. I have the spirit of love for others. I know who I am even if I have to go look for myself once in awhile. I have the Spirit of God within me. I am blessed in so many ways that I find myself outnumbered there, too. (Which is to say, that is not a bad thing. Not at all.)
That
being said, I am HUMAN. And sometimes that “human-ness” thing just doesn’t work
out so well for me and I succumb to, well, to all of it. I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Ouch.
I’m
getting older now and I’m growing tired now…
I
think I’ll have my coffee out on the deck this morning.
Clock: 4:12 a.m.
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