I am a Vessel, Breathing & Very Much Alive
a love story
I am water, giver of life.1
On land, I stand firm, a vessel.2
Air flows, stoking a fire.3
It is elemental, this thing we call life.
A pond or a bog nurtures peepers and frogs.4
A cabin holds a family’s memories.
Great grandmother’s tea-pot holds court, having served tea to many…
…and spirits embody a bureau, vase and vintage leather fishing bag.
This past weekend we said goodbye to this place,5
but just before we locked up, a pair of mallards appeared. When we returned the next day to retrieve a forgotten game, frogs were in a frenzy.6
If the cabin melts into the earth or if the pond becomes a bog, the land will remain, a vessel containing all that flows through.
Right now, though, I move on, receptive and ready…
…and find that Mallards inhabit this new body of water, also contained by rocks.7
The water is cold in this new place. Am I ready to swim? Not quite.
But I stand firm, remembering 25 years ago this week when my son emerged from his watery home and took his first breath.8
Like the land we just left, I am a vessel, breathing, processing all that flows, and very much alive and in love with the all of it.
We come from the Earth and will one day return to her.
For now, though, let’s give life to the creative fires burning within and invite them to flow forth.
I’m just in awe of what’s possible.
Happy Earth Month, my friends.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
If you have ever given birth, you probably remember when and where your water broke. For my son, it was on a rainy night at a college lacrosse game in Baltimore, MD; For my daughter, I was standing in our bedroom, naked, having just gotten out of the shower. In both cases, it took about 24 hours for my child to decide to share their voices with the world.
Each time, it was a watery, life-giving and wondrous moment.
This was such a fun moment! It was raining on my walk the other day…and in every puddle there were air bubbles dancing, appearing and disappearing…And then there was this one…hanging out, suspended. Magic.
This is a photograph of my father using a ‘blow poke' to breath air into a fire in a small wood stove in a small cabin that is no longer ours.
Monday was an amazing day. Three different bodies of water filled with croaking and peeping life…this first one in Sharon, Vermont…the next near our neighborhood in Quechee, Vermont and the third one, up the hill from our new house, which, according to GPS, is in Woodstock, Vermont.
My parents purchased this property in the 1980’s and built this cabin in the 1990’s. It has been part of the Upper Valley Land Trust since 1995, so had been open to the public for thirty years. We have now donated the entire property and cabin to the UVLT so that it can remain accessible to the public for years to come.
We are not really saying goodbye, because we can walk there whenever we want, but our family is letting go of it nonetheless, which is a kind of farewell - - it just hasn’t been the same since my mother died.
The mallards showed up on Sunday, just as we were finishing the clean-out of the cabin…and when I got home and took Lilly for another walk, there was that second pair of mallards. I had not intended to return, but I had forgotten the Chinese Checkers, which my daughter really wanted…My mother would play with her whenever they went to the cabin.
We now live very close to the Ottauquechee River in Quechee, Vermont.
I spent most my son’s birthday trying to edit the hundreds of photographs I created during his first few years…every outfit, every moment, precious. There is no way to describe the way each image inspired an all-body physical remembering of that time.
It is time to let go, to let those images and memories flow, but not today.
Truly lovely. Poignant. Rich in word and image. Looking forward to more.