Pendulums

January 9th, 2007

 

I ran, to avoid the avalanche that was about to happen. 

 

All the expectations, the hopes, the good intentions of this visit to Florida -- that I, a mere human, could somehow miraculously tie up all the loose ends of my mother's life, fix all her worries and wounds, and allow her to live our her final dreams in five weeks -- tottered precariously on the ledge of illusion overlooking reality.

 

So I ran.  Literally. 

 

A cold front blew in last night, lifting the humidity, leaving a crisp, sunny, Florida afternoon, allowing me to a bit further than on the previously humid days, discovering a new treasure.  Just a few hundred feet off the road, I was overtaken by silence in the cool shade with twinkling sunlight spotting the grass and dirt.  Hammock Park. 

 

Pausing on a bridge spanning a small creek, the smell transported me back to the creek running through the back of our property in New Jersey.  In a moment I relived days on the small raft built by my father, discovery of Indian caves and an arrowhead (I still have tucked away somewhere, once validated authentic by the Museum), and other games made up with our neighbors.   It was the smell of innocence and freedom. 

 

As I head back towards the road, a playground beckoned to be used on that sleepy weekday afternoon.   I attempted the catwalk, but lacked coordination, being too tall to really hang.  I hopped on a swing.

 

My toes barely touched the ground so I slowly began the full-body process of building momentum, the closest to flying for humans like me.   I grabbed the thick chains, leaned back, arms taunt, legs extended forward, pointing as gracefully as a ballerina.   Swiftly, I pulled my torso forward through the chains as my knees bent, quads pulling my legs back, setting in motion the momentum that would lift me higher and higher.  The anger and frustration flew out of my body like the birds singing through the trees.  "Whoosh" whispered the air passing by my ears in time with my breath and the soft tapping of the woodpecker.  The hammock of branches overhead neared and receded flashing back to the carefree days of childhood on the swing like an opening scene of a movie.

 

Only this is my life, not a movie.  I am moving the swinging.  Inhaling and exhaling, growing away and returning home.  

 

And in this swinging and silence, I felt love. 

 

Not in love or love for something, just being alive.   Stillness in motion.

 

Up until this moment my experience of love did flow like the pendulum of the swing, but got on extremes, in saturation or in withdrawal.   Love as I've experienced it has been, on the upswing, all-consuming:  a love that wanted to be everything, to live vicariously for or through me.  On the backswing, it has been withholding: a constant undertone of anxiety and foreboding of certain loss, pain and disappoint. 

 

I want love that is like swinging, whole, complete, and something I am part of making happen.  "Love is primarily an activity.  It's what you do for others that shows your love, not what you feel, " says Rabbi Boteach.   

 

It lifts you off your feet, asking you to surrender all of yourself and in return lifts you to weightless heights, but only for a moment, keeping a balance between each swing in the pendulum, each side -- the presence and the absence -- equal in vigor and rejuvenation, each giving you new perspective and a new thrill in looking at the same sky, the same life.   It requires effort and coordination and cooperation.  You must be aware, each moment, of the how the arms, legs, abdomen work in harmonious conjunction to keep you balanced and moving, each movement of the body holding for a moment of rest and appreciation, soaring to a new comfort and new understanding.    You cannot wait to be pushed nor can you push someone.  A push might get one started, but it is up to you to keep the swing moving, to reach the height of your potential. 

 

I wonder if a similar unexpected discovery two months ago was my push.  If so, it is my task to not get stuck on one side or the other of the pendulum. 

 

Slowly, I let each thrust of my body to and fro relent, slowing to a stillness over the ground, hopping off, knowing I must return to the rest of my life.   Back on solid ground, the weightlessness of the flying still has a hold and I feel like I am learning to walk anew.  Perhaps I am.   Slowly, my body remembers and I pick up the pace to a jog.   Running home, I look forward to what will turn out to be a wonderful dinner out with my mother, a place for us to be, with moments of lucidity, moments of listening to her remember, and moments of silence.