Late Bloomers
Crossroads Part Five + a Writing Workshop invitation (spooky season edition!)
late /lāt/ taking place after the expected, proper, or usual time. Old English læt (adjective; also in the sense ‘slow, tardy’), late (adverb), of Germanic origin; related to German lass, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin lassus, ‘weary’ and ‘let.’ (Merriam-Webster)
Mornings have turned crisp and the light is bending again toward its eventual southernmost station at winter solstice. As the audacious bloom of summer fades into fall, I am still writing about love, its arrival late yet somehow right on time. If life were a lunar cycle, I would be well into my full moon days. But only, that is, if I find myself in the end among the lucky to whom Life lends her full allotment.
He told me just the other day he carries grief over our diminishing days, so many of them over before we began. Ours is a love without the privilege of meeting one another in our waxing phase, the blind, budding bliss of young love. We console one another with pocket platitudes late-in-life lovers carry like loose change. Not because they aren’t true, but because we have to.
“I wasn’t ready for you.”
“I had to go through what I went through to be able to truly appreciate you.”
“Our meeting was right on time.”
“We are aging together like fine wine.”
I tell him that way back when with his loud truck, window-rattling speakers, and stupid street stunts, “I would’ve been so into you.” Then comes the ache of looking into the eyes of a rhizomatic love which held so much loss before it ever took root.
Doesn’t all love carry the seeds of loss? Aren’t they ripening with every passing moment? And isn’t this the first lesson we learn from Life and her seasons? And the first fact and final act we live our lives running from?
I’d have been his moon-eyed girl sitting middle on the bench seat of his Chevy pickup, my hand on his knee and his on the shifter I’m straddling in low rise jeans. I’d have worn his secondhand smoke like a first-prize ribbon on my clothes. We’d have stolen kisses at stoplights, even more under starlight parked in a ditch down some dusty, gravel drive. We’d have burned red hot for a summer like a meteor under that star-filled sky. Then like all the other boys, out like a rusty street lamp at dawn. I’d have broken his heart, because I only ever liked the ones who mishandled mine.
It’s Friday the 13th and I have an announcement for you…
Wildish Writing Workshop is back for another night!
If you know me then you know it’s no secret that it is my singular joy to fan the flames of your creativity. The last workshop was no exception. Thanks to all who attended. I was (and continue to be) blown away by the creativity and depth of emotion that came through our shared stories. I am rarin’ for another go ‘round!
Fall is upon us, y’all. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, autumn is the season of grief. All that was going to fruit during this solar cycle has come to pass and what remains to be harvested is all that will grow until next spring.
Autumn’s tool is the blade. Essential for harvesting life’s offerings. Critical for survival.
Just as the trees are producing cells at this very moment between their branches and leaves that will push them from their woody bases and send them into free fall, we too are asked to let go and turn our attention toward our inner lives.
This wisdom of the trees illustrates our present task, the work we must do in order to endure the harsh season of life.
And the ancestral wisdom in our bones tells us, we cannot do this work alone.
“This is solitary work we cannot do alone.”
Ira Progoff You’re invited to join me for Wildish: Spooky Season Edition!
A intimate night of storytelling and poetry writing where together we will create beauty from the stories of your lives.
We will gather on Friday, October 4th from 6:30-10:00pm at Bookish, the coolest, coziest, little used book store in OKC.
We’ll begin with a reading of Skeleton Woman from Women Who Run With the Wolves, a story that illustrates so beautifully the way parts of ourselves and our souls get lost along the way.
It is an instructive tale about soul retrieval, giving us a road map for how we welcome our lost pieces of soul back into the fold of our full lives. It is how we come fully alive. Together we will court them back and warm them by the fire of compassionate community.
Caboose Coffee will be open for sips. Pack your favorite snack, grab your bestie and your journal and join me for a night of singing over your soul bones.
We will laugh. We will cry. And you will leave feeling more connected to the real, real stories of your lives.
Think of it as grown up story time.
Cozy up and kick off spooky season with me! This will be a small, intimate gathering, so grab your ticket right meow. 🐈⬛
(Or I will have to send you another email with a pumpkin spice pun. Don’t think I won’t.)