Crossing off the “ifs” and welcoming the “is”
Tin is cutting both of his canine teeth so he went to bed in a whimper and woke up with a cry and has been unable to be consoled. We see those two big old teeth coming down and didn’t need the drool and tears to tell us what was up. So I started my fast day worried about him and then came up to my office to begin in earnest.
But actually my morning was even more rocky, as I had woke at 4AM with a bad attack of anxiety that encompassed everything from mounting bills in a diminishing earnings environment to my friend’s losing her 45 year old nephew to a heart attack on Thursday. I tossed and turned and tossed and turned and ended up finally going back to sleep and waking in a stupor late enough for Tin to have gotten up with his crying.
Up in my office, in my inner sanctum where I was to set the day off with meditations, I began the process that has now become a ritual for me – the reading of past Yom Kippur writings. I actually read through a lot of stuff – I read my Writer’s book that I started a long time ago where I make entries about writing and being a writer. My golden nugget find today was where at the very beginning of this book which began in 1990, now 20 years ago, I ask myself when I will feel comfortable calling myself a writer, and then use a quote that implies the answer: Writers have to write. So I thought about my blog that began now only five years ago and think about the times when I have thought about giving it up but almost like an addict had to come back to it time and again.
I read through a journal about the break up of my first marriage where I was in the throes of separating property that I now know was the currency of our emotions, and then the beginning and breakup of my second marriage which only lasted five months, and then the beginnings of my third marriage. I also read through my journal about the affair I had and my sessions with E, which helped scrape the scales from my eyes.
Now here I am back again seeing E and this time it is to take it all to the next level not to repair collateral damage. This time I want to see in T more than I expect from her and I want her to see in me a person larger than she imagines.
And then I read through my Yom Kippur journals – do you know what one of my dreams was last year on September 28, 2009?
“To raise a happy and healthy child.”
My entry last Yom Kippur begins: “My worst fear that my mom would get sick and start dying over a protracted period is in play.”
I come to this year ready to begin again with all my wisdom and scars – open heart, open mind, open arms.