“Life: a cycle. A series of events, meetings, and departures. Friends discovered, others lost, Precious time, wastes away. Big droplet tears are shed for yesterday, but are dried in time for tomorrow, until all that remain are foggy, broken memories of a happy yesteryear.” -Daniela Gallo
Today I am reliving the past in the present and releasing it into the future. My doula and nanny from over a decade ago is here in my bed as I write tonight’s Positivity Quest. The sweetest thing about visiting with our oldest intimates is how they bring up the funniest, saddest, most poignant moments. Nicole saved me after my fourth baby; she was the light and balance in our family in all the months that it took me to find my center.
As she remembers with each of my children their earliest years, all the while chasing around her two little toddler boys, the life cycle turns another click on the wheel. Her babies, drunk with curiosity and joy, needing the constant vigilance that newness demands, and our relationship is the same, still sneaking in deep conversations between preparing tiny bits of food, earnest conversation about the smallest details of life, which is the whole of life for a toddler.
Listening to that same earnest interest to my growing teenagers, I remember again about how much I have always learned about them by witnessing them with other adults who joined our tribe. My children always had other caretakers aside from myself and my husband, who loved them and taught me a new way to love them. We didn’t have family around, and learning how to build a family as a team was a task that sometimes required time away from the children, both individually and together. The task was arduous and I am reminded by this woman who stood by during some of the most chaotic and painful years in my family and marriage.
Katherine Porter wrote: “There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.” Finding the order in our own lifecycle comes more easily sometimes through the eyes of someone who loves you.
Loving people might just be the most ordered and centered place we can bring to the chaos of human life. But there is no getting it right except moment by moment. We get to start again every time we wake up. And waking up to the wonder and the love of your life in the here and now is the gold ring worth reaching for.
