I got up at 5:45 this morning – quite standard when I am waiting for an early morning robo call to substitute teach. Lately, I’ve been getting enough jobs in advance, or at least the evening before, that there hasn’t been any waiting, so today took me back to a few months ago when I was doing this every week day. I’m strangely calm as I wait. This isn’t stressful for me, as one would suppose it to be. For this, I am grateful. Maybe enough uncertainty over the last year and a bit has brought me to the place of whatever happens, it will just be. There isn’t good or bad, certain or uncertain. There is just being in this moment, then merging into the next. Not that I am immune from stress – not remotely – but the blessing is that this particular not-knowing does not contribute to it.

Apparently there were humpbacks and dolphins streaming by Kitty Coleman campground yesterday, a short drive from our house. On my walk just before sunset last night, I saw seals and three herons. They have returned! Driving back from Cumberland, where I shared a delightful few hours with my friend Heather, there were swans in an open field – a huge flock of them, stretching their wings, resting, their necks like curlicues, oblivious to the traffic streaming past them. How renewing, this constant alteration of the flora and fauna that keeps me on my toes, creating both wonder and a desire to wander. It seems I will not be called in to teach today, so before catching up on household and business chores, Don and Moondog and I will wander down a new path to the ocean, in search of newness and change, but also serenity and gratitude.

It’s been nearly a year since we’ve moved here now. Emily’s death has massaged itself into me enough that it no longer consistently throbs or even aches, but has become a part of who I am. I greet her, talk to her, find ways to be with her throughout the day that go beyond my daily beach walks (or sometimes beach drives, where I stay in my car because the rain is coming down sideways and I can’t abide the smell of wet dog or the stripping down of slathered clothes, like mustard on a hotdog when we arrive home).

I’ve been listening to a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes about people who are non-verbal autistics, and who are ‘spellers’ (use spelling to communicate, using a letterboard or keyboard), and how so many of them possess what has been called the ‘savant’ skill of telepathy. Just wow. Somehow, this has also brought me closer to Emily. I am just more and more convinced that there is so much more than our empiricism, our materialistic tradition of science, allows us to know. 

I am an open book. I am practicing a small degree of skepticism, because I do not want to be open to the winds of conspiracy or misinformation, but my soul and my experiences tell me that there is something beyond our daily experience of mind and body. I am ready to receive. I am already receiving.

I viscerally feel, not in a five senses way of feeling, Emily’s presence with me. She is here with me. Even now as I write this. No, I cannot prove it. I don’t care to. Much of me doesn’t even care to share it with the world, because this is my own little conch shell I hold in my palm, speaking the ocean to me. I am comforted daily by this private knowing, and it gives me what others call bravery but I call necessity to carry on and also to feel joy in my small daily acts that lead up to one day, and then another.

I share because I know there are those in need of comfort, who are also searching. I share so that my private benediction might spur your own sliver of awakening, whatever that might look like for you.

I wish love and comfort and peace to all who read my meanderings. May you notice the beauty on your own trails today. 

*Photo credit: Andy Thomas