Breaking the Seal

Springtime always makes me nostalgic. Hopeful, happy, and wistful... This year, with so many monumental changes in my life, just seeing the trees yesterday caused me to out and out sob. I am serious. They were so green, and so fresh! Beside them, the first goslings of the year were toddling about on the newly mown slope that led down to the lake and I lost my shit under a sky so blue it was blinding. With my windows open and upbeat music playing, I had to pull over and let the grief  over the swiftness of life wash over me.

I know I can't hold back the emotions when they hit. At least, not for long. If I am feeling overcome, keeping my tears inside doesn't help anything. It's such a release to just bawl, knowing it won't be permanent. Just as nothing in the springtime lasts for much longer than a moment, my pain for everything I have lost (and am going to lose) doesn't have to stick around too long, either.

I hadn't really gotten emotional during our read through's for the Listen To Your Mother show. I mean, I was really upset in August when I learned of the upcoming ending, but it was still in the distant future and I was overwhelmed with so many other losses, that this one didn't take precedence. The other day, Melisa and I read through the final version of our script and the last words that we will ever read on stage and...nothing. I didn't cry.

"Crap. I really need to cry," I told her. I knew that if it didn't come out beforehand, it would be too much on stage on May 7th. I needed a pre-cry!!

I started listing all of the things that I would miss about the show, and all of the people I was in contact with that I wouldn't be talking to as much, and that I probably wouldn't ever be working with her on a project again (she moved to Knoxville!)... And then the seal was broken. It isn't the stage, or the attention, or the sharing of my own stories that I will truly miss (though I love all of that, so very much). It is knowing that this portion of my life, with constant contact with people that I love, will be over.

And I'm ok with it. I AM. Shut up. I AM. Just like I'm "ok" with my kids growing up and life changing and, gulp, the death of my dad. I'm ok with it in that I have no control over any of them, and so I HAVE TO be ok, otherwise...what would I be?

The sheer beauty in the greenness of those trees and freshness of the goslings is the impermanence of it all. Life is precious because it is fleeting. If my babies were to be babies forever, the joy of new discoveries wouldn't exist. I treasure the peaks of joy in life because they are just that: peaks, surrounded by valleys. Up and Down and up again...

I cry a lot. I always have. I feel the moments pass and the emotions overwhelm me. Joy and pain are just opposite sides of the same coin and I KNOW that I cannot have one without the other. And so I choose to enjoy this moment in my life. Climbing this current mountain of hope and happiness and trying to enjoy all of the small moments that Life presents to me.