Like A Kid Again

I have no idea how, but I suspect a mix of ego and curiosity, led me to being talked into giving my five-year old lady bug charge a lesson in turning cartwheels a half hour before I had to leave for my internship.

I was not dressed for cartwheels.

I was dressed, am dressed still, to play at being a therapist.

Not that it was really playful, man the session I did tonight was a doozy.

But.

I got into the spirit of doing it.

The mom asked me if I knew how to do cartwheels and I said yes and the next thing you know we’re all tramping down to the back yard to have a lesson.

I wasn’t even nervous.

I was actually a touch excited.

Could I still do a cart-wheel?

It turns out I can!

And I did a great cart-wheel.

Fuck, I impressed myself.

I landed much softer than I thought and it was thoughtless, effortless, easy, I just did it.

I had to break down the steps of it to the young lady, who tried valiantly and ended up hitting her head.

Then her knee.

Then her other knee.

I had a heap of five-year old in my lap for a few minutes crying.

But.

She’s resilient, children really are, and she got back up and asked that I show her again and I did and then I did a round off for fun and then a few more.

My arm pits starting sweating a little and I got quite warmed up.

It felt really fun.

Good to be in my body.

And also, sweet and silly and goofy.

I asked the mom to make sure that she didn’t tell any of my therapy clients that I was busy turning cartwheels in her back yard before my session.

We both giggled.

It was cute.

I don’t know why  it tickled me so much, but it was a very sweet moment to share with the family.

And I like that I was willing to take a risk and try something I haven’t done in years, that I was willing to fall on my ass.

Turns out I didn’t.

Turns out I still have a pretty damn good cart-wheel.

Not bad for a 45-year-old woman.

I mean.

I’ll take it.

I remember really well teaching myself how to do one.

I was in kindergarten, five years, maybe six years old.

I was very determined and I taught myself in the span of an afternoon in the back yard of my Aunt Teresa’s duplex that my mom and me and my sister were staying at until we were back on our feet.

I think that we lived off and on with this particular aunt a few times.

I know both my aunt and my mom were separated and/or divorcing from their husbands.

We had lived with my aunt for a little while in Columbus and then again on the North East side of Madison before moving into some section 8 housing that my mom finally got approved for.

It was a tough time at my aunt’s, when I look at it with perspective, there weren’t enough rooms for all of us and I had my “room” in the basement.

It was dark.

It was full of spiders.

And I didn’t like it at all.

But I taught myself to steel myself to the darkness and make myself sleep and when I think about it I’m surprised I was able to do so, but like I said, children are resilient, they can get used to a lot of things.

I spent most of my time outside while we lived with my aunt.

I spent a lot of time in the woods, I spent a lot of time wandering around the nearby farms and the outlying housing developments that had not been built yet, but just had the streets with empty lots waiting for the houses to be built.

It was on the very edge of what was Madison.

It was farmland across the street one block over and woods, granted not a huge forest, but a big woods none the less, on the other side of the foot path that I walked to school.

I loved those woods, spent a lot of time playing imaginary games in them and looking for jack in the pulpits and climbing trees.

Although I also sensed there were places in the woods that weren’t safe, I can almost now feel a certain kind of darkness or heaviness in between the thickets of trees in some spots that I recall quite ardently avoiding going into.

But I was quite happy on the edges, near the prairie grass meadow that flanked one side of it and the abandoned farm just over the top of the hill.

The farm that I liked to explore.

Including the silo.

I climbed up it once.

I was six?

I climbed the rungs on the outside, all the way to the top, I let go at the top and almost fell, startled by birds, pigeons I think, that flew out as I peeked in over the top.

I lost my mittens.

They were red yarn mittens.

My mom was miffed.

I couldn’t tell her that they had fallen into the top of a tree.

That was how high up I was.

My mittens fell from my pockets when I startled back and landed on a tree below me.

I was an adventurous child.

I was also not monitored very heavily.

Some would say that was neglect.

Heck, I would probably too, looking back.

But at the time I was free and happy to be free, wild, a child in the woods, the grass, collecting leaves, laying on the hill, looking at clouds, walking to the horse farm down the road and letting myself into the stables to pet the horses.

I was feral.

Now that I think about it.

A wild little thing.

With ambitions.

I really wanted to be in gymnastics.

Not just out in the hinterlands, and I’m not sure where I got the idea, maybe from watching other little girls at school, but my mother made it crystal clear that there was not money for that sort of thing.

There never would be either.

But that’s another story for another time.

So.

I taught myself.

I watched and learned and spent those hours that summer, turning cart-wheel after cart-wheel in the high backyard grass that was full of dandelions.

By the time they had turned from yellow gold saffron to balls of white cottony fluff, I could do perfect cartwheels, text-book.

Then I taught myself how to do them one-handed, and yes, once or twice I did them no handed, but that was hard and I didn’t always have the courage, and then I taught myself how to do round offs.

Never flips though, they alluded me.

And today, forty years later, give or take a month, I was doing cartwheels with a five-year old girl in the setting sun and laughing like I was five years old myself.

It was a pretty happy way to end my week.

Cartwheels.

And.

Laughter.

In the golden light of Friday.

Maybe I’ll Sleep In

Probably not.

My brain will wake me up.

Thoughts will come a cruising through my head and I’ll get up.

I was just thinking about sleeping in as the yoga class tomorrow that I was going to go to was cancelled.

Ugh.

I have plenty to do.

Don’t I always.

So.

I’m not super frustrated, and it’s not typical for me to be able to go to yoga class on a Thursday morning anyhow.

I am usually going to work.

But my family is still away and I’ve only got my internship to be accountable to tomorrow.

Ok.

Not true.

I was asked by the family to go to the house and open it up and collect the mail and water the plants and stuff of that nature.

So I’ll be making a little venture over to Glen Park in the late afternoon.

Prior to that I will be reconnecting with an old friend in Hayes Valley.

Do some catch up and see what’s going on in his life.

It’s been years.

Sometimes it amazes me.

That these years they pass.

They go so quick and I want to make sure that I impress upon myself as many experiences as I can.

The sun on my face.

For instance.

I made it out of the fog for a little while today and the sun on my face was exquisite.

The wind in my hair, my eyes closed, the smell of creosote and the sounds of hummingbirds flitting about.

Hummingbirds do make sound.

The whir of their wings close to my ears as they darted about in the flowers.

A high pressure thrum of air and the stirring of molecules by my face and off they go.

I had one of those days that felt like such a dream.

Sweet and sunny and soft.

I even napped.

I know.

I never nap.

I fell asleep listening to the Chopin station on Spotify.

Also something that I do not do.

Fall asleep listening to music.

I generally need it to be dark and quiet.

Music catches at my mind and I can find it distracting, but this today, soft, dreamy, sweet, warm, late afternoon nap, which was not in my plans, and was so good, to feel so held in my sleep.

The best.

Such a gift.

And all the little reveries I had drifting in and out between the piano notes floating through the air in my room.

Exquisite.

I wore a new dress today.

Maybe that was it.

I like getting dressed up and not having to wear my nanny clothes or shoes is a nice change of pace for me.

I have a closet full of dresses that I don’t often wear as they are not suited for nannying.

Shit.

I should wear one tomorrow that I have been itching to wear.

I totally forgot I had gotten it in the mail last week, but I was annoyed that they hadn’t sent both the dresses I had ordered and I didn’t pull it out as I wasn’t sure what or if the company was going to refund my order or deny that they hadn’t sent the dress.

I sent them an e-mail and I think there was a part of me that was all stubborn, like, I wanted the other dress more, damn it.

Turns out that they had sold out and they happily refunded the dress to my bank account.

So.

I took the other dress out of its packaging.

And oh.

It’s pretty.

Sort of old-fashioned retro styling with a sweetheart bodice and a bit of a flared skirt, white with small black polka dots and navy and royal blue roses.

It’s very fetching.

I could wear that tomorrow.

Although, it doesn’t strike me as a therapy dress and I have a client tomorrow night.

Ah.

I don’t need to figure it out right now.

It was just nice to be in my dress today, out in the sun, the wind fluttering the long hem around my ankles.

I felt ethereal at times.

The way the sky looked between the tree leaves.

I was in awe.

I have such a good life.

I am really happy.

Oh.

Sure.

My brain likes to sneak attack me when I’m least expecting it.

But it passes and usually I can take a moment in those places of vulnerability and say, hey, “thanks for sharing, but I got this,” or better, “God’s got this.”

Which is true.

I’m human.

I’m going to fall on my face no matter how hard I try.

The point is to try.

If I’m falling down that means that I am trying and I am living.

I want so to have a full rich experienced life.

I want to see things and experience things and feel.

I definitely have the feelings thing down.

Ha.

I have a friend who sent me a check in the mail today.

We share a MOMA membership and I just renewed it.

He used to say “you wear your heart on you sleeve,” to me all the time.

I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I believe he was referring to me being emotionally transparent in my blogs.

Which, strange though this may seem, has changed a bit for me.

Not being emotionally transparent, per se.

I think that I am pretty damn transparent here in my writing.

But.

That my writing has changed since he made that comment.

I don’t share as much content as I used to.

Oh.

Sure.

There is stuff that happens and I will report back factually, with much acuity, I will paint a picture of rolling hills, the grass drying and cream yellow, the smell of sage in a garden, the look of tiny green tomatoes just beginning to bud on the vine, the surprise kiss of beauty planted on me in the garden, the roses, the old garden ones that proliferated in all gardens on the edges with the fallen soft pink petals crumpled on the ground, the sound of hawk flying over head screeching for its lunch to show itself in the grass.

I can show you these things.

But my content used to be a lot more focused on who and what and when.

I find that I am leaving out that more and more.

Then it’s just the feelings and the susuration of wind in my heart.

The way love feels in my body.

How I want to be and more and yes when I stumble, getting back up and trying again.

All the things.

All the lovely things.

All the beauty that I took photographs in my mind today.

The bluest blue.

The soaring in my heart.

The glad song on my lips.

The dreams and revery.

All of it.

Wonderous and magic.