her able hands

Though it’s supposed to clear out this afternoon. We’ve had clouds and rain since Saturday evening and yesterday dropped down into the 50s. I wish we had our rain barrel system in place, they’d all be full. When I made the rounds of the garden beds in the evening, I imagined that everything would be paused and waiting for the cold to pass, but no, everything had made a giant leap for the sky.

I have to sit and thin out the salad beds tonight, or the overcrowding is going to cause everything to bolt on the next hot day, they’re all growing tall and thin, not setting about their jobs of making nice, fat plants. My fault, of course. I also hope to replant beets, beans, zucchs and yellow crooknecks. The work days are getting tough again, and I feel deflated and spent when I get home, so haven’t gone out to do anything yet this week. That situation is only going to get worse this summer, so I have to find a balance for myself in order to keep that illness-inducing stress at bay. If I can’t make time to garden, the stress builds up. But if I overdo it, I’m useless at work. I need to remain very useful at work right now in order to keep my job, until it’s out of my hands (which it will be soon).

But in the meantime, my family and the garden, they remind me of what’s of most value. Scrabbling to hang onto something that makes me so unhappy? Not so important. Doing a good job, showing up for what I have agreed to do, and collecting the paycheck for right now? Yes. That’s important. Especially while we still have two house payments. It’s a question of attitude, of approach from within. To consider my inner life a garden that needs and deserves vigilant, gentle cultivation. Be there at work with eyes wide open, knowing that playing in this particular game means that other people call all the shots, and the shots they call have only to do with money. Period. Never to do with the people who help generate that money. Ever. No matter what bullshit rhetoric they spout at staff meetings. That’s all lies. Always. It’s quite metaphysical, this working for a big corporation. One has to face the fact that it could all be gone tomorrow, must keep that in the consciousness at all times in order to move forward without expectation and attachment.

I was looking through my iPhoto library for an appropriate image to illustrate my feelings this morning and found this, taken a few weeks ago, when the Dame’s Rocket was just starting to bloom. It’s hard to look at, the eye vibrates on those hard, white ropes. It reminds me of looking at Johnny Carson’s herringbone suits on the late-night black and white TV we had when I was little. But the more I looked at it, the more I saw the warm glow of the late afternoon sun just beyond the ropes. Imagined walking around them to the sunny place. And then I remembered what those ropes are; a giant hammock with a ticking stripe cushion to keep elbows and feet from falling through and getting tangled up. A place of repose. Why look at it as an intrusion? Why not accept the invitation to step right up, recline and enjoy the warmth? I think this weekend, I have a date with the hammock.

So my job is to remember to not take it personally. Spend a small part of every day making new connections for work (and daycare, we found out yesterday that they closed the daycare facility starting in September). Then go home and be myself with those I love and adore. Sweep the floor. Scrub the toilet. Build the bamboo tee-pee fence for the tomatoes. Plant the hot peppers. Start some basil. Thin the greens. Make a salad. Keep the laundry clean. Make dinner. Listen to the kids’ stories. Ask questions. Hold hands with Chris. Push my fingers into the cool dirt beneath the straw, tickle the tiny tubers at the base of the potato plants, let the pulse work its way up my arm and into my heart. Say thank you.

Technorati Tags: work, corporation, meditation, garden, family, hammock, attitude

Bookmark It