Two minutes to 7am here. I hurt. I had a good stretch at physio Thursday. I had two good walks with my son. I notice this year there is a lot more flab on my body. I am aging. There are things I want to say and may run out of time. I am strange person. I have always been aware of time in odd ways, long and small, eternal but moment by moment. I live somewhere in between. Place is very important to me. I start to hear the word show up around me and realize how long place has been a concept I value.

Place, beneath the bushes, the gentle arc and quiet rustle of belonging or belongingness, in and among. Creatures live there. I visit. A simple moment or several of childhood. Impractical. A place of ideas and the calmness to feel them. I watch tiny snails, a bee, birds further along in the bush. Learning that silence bring near. The air is warm, the ground cool where shadows intersperse. The world is teaching me about itself. I talk to the bush, the snail, the bee. And I hear my mother calling. Get out of there, you’ll make yourself dirty, what are doing anyway? Words dribble out, but she shouts them away, and I follow her, back to the house.

I’m taking a course, talking to friends, using words I do not know. Sharing again, and again, the story of how I raised my sons, how I left their father, how I am getting by, working and aging. How language played such a large role in our lives, and ways communication took it all apart, caused questions to reframe and restructure my actions, my choices, my beliefs (maybe those).

Places are important to me; behind the couch, under the bed, the back of my closet silent and dark. Places pressed in, embedded in memory, safety and fear, a need for space, a need for closeness. The weight of those imposing their strength, my mother, ex husband, my sons at times. The weight of arms tender in love, a kiss on my head, a hand on my back, the difference of hugs. Safety, compassion, ardour, defense. Are we bonding? Yes. The questions of love. Mom safe? Yes. My son, holding on, learning a hug is more than a touch, ritual of grace we teach when they’re small. And now, in his 30’s my oldest holds me when he hugs.

Writing. It’s how I think at times. After yesterday’s class, I lined up several (ok, more than several) videos to listen to while I work, clean, putter, learn to feel my apartment and not push it away. It is strange to hear people talking about things I’ve been telling those in my life in different ways for years. I have questions on a few integration places. How to ask them into spaces not my own. I consider how many words I have put into this computer the past five years, more than that, twenty or more, and longer if you count early poetry. But specifically, words of memoir and memory, sloshing around, my mind like a swamp. And my body, my poor body, I ask it so much. Push it too hard, and not hard enough to keep it in shape. Pain triggers sleep, drifting awake. Memory intrigues me. I watch others in my course hold phrases and words, work concepts, make frames. I do that best when I hold it all loose. Like these words, in this place, where I watch them appear. Do they come from my brain, or my heart, or where else? They roll down my arms, past shoulders that scream, through channels of nerves and the lump on my arm, out fingers and palms held above keys, where pain hits an 8/10 as I type. But why do I write? Shift in my chair? Make adjustments to angles, how I sit, where I face.

Somewhere in the ribcage and down into the gut, and upward to my throat, where the muscles hurt for days when you smile for hours at a birthday or a wedding, convocation, those we love, those we honour, and embrace. In my body, the knowledge tingles, lights up my eyes, even through the burning, pins and needles, sharp biting pains. The space in my ribs grows greater in size, it changes unseen, unnoticed by the world. But it’s there pressing down, embedding a fine seed; is it hope, is it dream, determination to go on? Purpose and joy, desperation over need. It’s there in awareness talking, something sacred, something real. It’s the place of expectation, I wage war with myself, get in trouble with my mother or my ex who can’t see that this place is very special. It’s the place where I wait on moments of grace, time extended to allow my ability to wait. Ability too often is taught to demand. We break trust with ourselves and don’t realize what we’ve done. We take this home, this body, this mind, fill them with consumption, stale air, and say we’ll pay.

So I sit, in this place, let my hands bypass my mind, let my mind open, my eyes close, breath slow. I feel my body shake. This broken house, this tiny home, rocked by the world and by myself. Slowly, I let the rocking become small movements back and forth, the rhythm of ages, foot on the cradle, silence of peace.

This house is my home, my comfort, my joy, place of waiting, of meeting, outside and within. Yes. To past, to future, just yes.