Being Walhydra all the time is just too much work. At least that's how she's been feeling lately.
"Can't I please be someone else?" she asks.
Sorry, Dear," Goddess says. "I put in just the mix of ingredients I intended you to have for this incarnation. You're still trying too hard. Why don't you just go out for a little walk?"
"That won't do any good," Walhydra sulks.
"Probably not, in your case. But it's a nice day. Now run along."
This morning and yesterday morning were two variants on a frustrating theme which has been playing itself out for months now.
On Tuesday she awoke promptly at 5 AM—the alarm was set for 6 and she's been tending to sleep in till 7—and she knew she might as well get up. Monkey mind was already chanting the litany of work- and Senior Witch-related responsibilities which burden her days and nights.
Tuesday the tai chi, meditation and prayer did well their job of centering Walhydra into a healing awareness of the Divine Presence.
This morning, on the other hand, the alarm went off at 5...wah!...because she had set the clock wrong. She reset it for 7, woke again at 6, shut off the alarm, hid under the covers till 7:15—and finally couldn't stand it that the litany was still running.
Wash face, dress, walk out the door.
Walk the cool morning neighborhood. Squirrels, cats, birds, blossoms. Things which usually bring Walhydra back into the Sacred Present.
Not today.
But by the time she has returned home, hubby Jim is up, in his bathrobe, getting his breakfast.
As the gentle reader as surely figured out by now, Walhydra comes from a family of talkers. Being a preacher's kid, her first expectation is always that problems can be solved—if at all—by talking them out.
But Walhydra is sooooo tired of talking about all this, and it isn't working anyway.
So she just looks up sadly from the chair she's slumped into and says, "There's this deep down despair...I just keep getting stuck in the mornings with all the details...."
Hubby Jim walks over without hesitation to stand beside Walhydra. He hugs her head gently to his belly, and says, "I love you."
*sigh*
A few silent moments of this.
Then Walhydra stands for a hug. Warm, long, full-body, as Jim always readily gives them.
She gets a catch in the throat and it names itself: "Mom."
It's not about all the details. It's still about the loss.
After a while, Jim leaves for work.
Walhydra sits on the back stoop with breakfast, watching squirrels, cats, birds, blossoms. It's so quiet and reassuring. Such a welcoming Present.
What is grace? This morning it is—as often—this amazing hubby of hers who knows to hug instead of talking.
Walhydra asks Goddess when she can make an end of recycling the same challenges of loss and responsibility.
Goddess grins.
"To paraphrase Charlton Heston: ' When you're finished.' "
She stirs the breeze a bit.
"But meanwhile, Dear," she whispers, "ask for more hugs."
Blessèd Be.
