Now

As humans we tend to spend a lot of time in our heads - or frantically trying to be elsewhere, or striving to achieve, or do, or have, or be, other than we are. Despite years of study and an awareness of the frailty, the fragility, the temporal nature of things, I am as guilty of this as anyone else. The last few days have been ones of solitude and introspection. The metallic skies and oppressive cloud, floating slowly above the charcoal chimneys have matched my mood. When I forget to be "aware" I will find that I have been sitting hunched forward, straining to hear, forgetting to exhale. When I catch myself unawares (literally) I will go through a mental checklist and tick off my worry list. I try to remind myself to stay present and aware and awake and in the NOW. When do we remember the past but in the now? When do we worry about the future but in the now? Now is all we ever have. Part of this mulling and thinking and wishing led me to mentally narrate all of the things that I had been concerned about and in an agony of self sabotage and maudlin reminiscing I wished the following. I wished that - I had been more aware of my Mother when she was well - that I had remembered more of what she said or thought or felt - that I had paid attention to her advice - or remembered the last thing she said to me – or -God help me - what her voice sounded like - that I had sat and conversed with her about her hopes and dreams, her favourite things, the minutae of her life - that I had not been so busy and distracted and filled with a sense of my own importance - that I had not been so hysterical and dramatic and unreliable and spent so many years lurching from one emotional crisis to the next, hurtling through jobs, homes, countries and men like a pinball in a giant machine - that I had spent more time with her - that I had taken her on the Spanish Sojurns I took alone - that I was a better daughter ....................... Now is all we ever have. Now, today, this moment, I am breathing in and out. I am aware that I am carrying the essence of myself within this battered body, this baleful heap that I schlepp around in, that needs to be fed and watered and washed and put to bed. It is the greatest thing I will ever own. I need to be easier with it, to love and respect it, to lighten up on how much abuse I give it and hurl at it. I am a living breathing human female. My legs walk the me that is named Michelle around, her arms can carry and hold, her brain works, her ears hear, her heart despite all its bruising, still beats, her soul is reflected in eyes that are jaded, but hopeful. NOW is all we ever have.