Pondering........

I sit here today looking across the front field at the pond as I have done for all these many years and I ponder. A pond for pondering....how about that! The trees, the grass, the early blooming plants and weeds growing together this spring as they do every spring, inviting me into their new growth and creation. What form will they take this year? What new growth will emerge? What weed will I pull out only to be surprised later, through my lackadaisical weeding techniques that I've plucked the beginnings of a mid-summer blooming giant white phlox.

It seems I've been learning this lesson for a long time....how to slow down and wait for the full creation. Often what appears to be a weed at first glance, transforms into a splendid display in the fullness of summer.

Residue of my mother's training, I suppose. The race for thoroughness and efficiency often overwhelms and kills a mid summer bloom. Sounds like one of those proverbs that people quote. However, I have searched to find my own pace, my own discernment, my own voice, my own thoughts, my own ideas, my own creations, my own mistakes, my own shortcomings, my own errors over these many years I've spent on the face of this earth and truthfully it has been quite an enlightening process. Some parts felt like the trip down the rails after the roller coaster crested, I must admit, but nonetheless enlightening.

To sort myself out from that which I absorbed from my family of origin and culture has been an adventure. I remember when I lost all my hair during chemotherapy seeing for the first time a scar on my scalp that I received from being burned with hot grease when I was ten months old. How about that! To see a part of myself that I had never seen before after.....48 years.

I viewed the scar through my "Mother" eyes. It was horrible. How this infant girl must have screamed when she was burnt. The size and depth of the scar told that tragic tale. I wept for that ten month old baby who was me. I wanted to run back and scoop her up, hold her and rock her and ease her pain. She and I were one in that moment. This breast-cancerous, chemotherapy generated return to my infancy allowed an embrace, a meeting, a union. A time traveling moment that allowed me to see first hand a piece of my early life of which I had only heard stories. I was transfixed.

Over the years many times, family members, friends, therapists worked to pluck this memory covering it with other story versions and other people's perspectives. Some even credited me for having the determination, curiosity and impetus to climb up and pull this skillet filled with hot grease down upon myself, (quite an accomplishment for a 10 month old). Fortunately, the phlox kept growing and bloomed for me that mid summer morning I looked into the mirror as clumps of deadened hair fell to reveal that white blossomed scar.