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"Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter.
Looking at its sad appearance who would think that
those stiff branches, those jagged twigs
would turn green again and blossom
and bear fruit next spring;
but we hope they will,
we know they will."
-Goethe
This quote was recited on National Public Radio this morning during “The Writer’s Almanac”. It touched me in a way my own thoughts and words cannot.
It reminds me that we each have such a great capacity for beauty, grace and love. I used to think that if our lives resembled trees, family and children would be one of the branches. Now I know, that for me, it is the trunk, the root. The green core of my center.
I think I will go to the sea this weekend and throw in a stone in to the water. I will make a wish, and part of that wish will be reserved for YOU as well (yes YOU, reading this!). If all of our wishes were cast out onto the sea at the same time, imagine how the current would change, the waves would crest and the weather would beckon different tidings.
What could it hurt? I think of the childhood story, “Horton Hears a Who,” when all the Who’s shouted “We are here! We are here!” and a large, courageous roar was heard from the strata of a dustball. What if we all made a wish, for ourselves, for the other women and men experiencing this baby-making journey, for all the babies lost and found. What if we ALL did this, just put love and hope and healing power out there? Do you think we would FEEL IT?
I do.
It’s Goethe’s birthday today. He was a famous German writer and philosopher who seemed to have changed the world in his time. Born in 1749, he lived for 83 years. What do you suppose Goethe would think, if he knew his quotes were translated to English in a COUNTRY that did not exist for most of his younger life, recited over the RADIO, pulled from the INTERNET and re-presented on a BLOG about IVF ?
Oh, the power of words.
What would my day have been like if I had not awoken to reading this quote from the Writer’s Almanac on my Blackberry this morning? The sun casting long shadows into our small bedroom. My body aching for a sign. Just something to hold on to today as we form the next steps of our journey and prepare for the emotional load.
I feel like I can hear my grandmother’s voice telling me to “breathe”, and reassuring me that all I need can be found inside myself, if I dig for it and believe in it. It will happen…Whatever that path or journey, wisdom and experience are to be found with each change of direction….
I don’t know what’s next for us. IVF again, a break, Donor eggs, Adoption? Each path offers it’s own bliss and shortfalls. What I can do TODAY however, is try my damnest to treasure these moments in between. The sun on my face, the strength in my backbone, a radiant, beating heart.
Wishing you strength, wisdom and JOY!
M
Another poem on the Almanac today:
Not Swans
by Susan Ludvigson
I drive toward distant clouds and my mother's dying.
The quickened sky is mercury, it slithers
across the horizon. Against that liquid silence,
a V of birds crosses-sudden and silver.
They tilt, becoming white light as they turn, glitter
like shooting stars arcing slow motion out of the abyss,
not falling.
Now they look like chips of flint,
the arrow broken.
I think, This isn't myth-
they are not signs, not souls.
Reaching blue
again, they're ordinary ducks or maybe
Canada geese. Veering away they shoot
into the west, too far for my eyes, aching
as they do.
Never mind what I said
before. Those birds took my breath. I knew what it meant.
"Not Swans" by Susan Ludvigson, from Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems. © Louisiana State University Press, 2000
FIND IT HERE: The Writer’s Almanac http://www.elabs7.com/functions/message_view.html?mid=837262&mlid=499&siteid=20130&uid=6959020fe3
