Tea With Me: 8th June, 2023 Thursday

So Dream Kite wafted way to high above obscuring clouds for me to snatch at a few tales. Morning signaled opening with a lightening monochrome definition of the outlines of my room, its window into the front courtyard just beginning to find shape. I shut my eyes for a time listening to some author’s words, drifting down the river doze to come aground at time to open up to Day. The Santa Fe Sun had brushed the canvas of my world with its chiaroscuro liquid gold and shade. I am still after 3 years and over a thousand mornings in this house, stupefied at the magic of this light. I have trouble feeling worthy of basking in its gift.

But I have trouble with my worthiness.

A week ago, Husband and I ventured forth to leave SF, NM, to fly across two thirds of this fracturing nation, for a family wedding. Hudson, NY was host to a swarm of bloods of mine. Its hotels and B&B’s homed us as we kissed and chatted and hugged and entertained and presented the approved parts of ourselves we developed long ago under our parents’ roof.

We had not all gathered for 6 years. And what a 6 years it has been. For each of us. We are all carrying age in ways that etch the ancestors across our bones. The glimmers of my family’s branches came through in profiles, laughter, scowls, grins, hands, familial tremors, oh so very much…

Took two days for my overwhelm to hit. By that time the DJ had begun to spin and so did I. My joints did fine as they face the end of their 64th year.

Masks were hard. Impenetrable. Have we donned them for eachother or just for me? I am not the easy one for some. I see.

I saw the age, the wear, the burdens, the grimness of the chokehold on tradition and the little succor it provides for those whose grips are to their deaths. All this against the canvas of the wedding crowd so determinedly unfettered by what came before in a town which wears the face of industrial era slavery and landscape rape.

As we separated Sunday am, I felt the faucet of the leaving. When will we see eachother again. Might some of us not be there then?

I wept the afternoon away. And understood the child in me who felt so alien in my family pool. As long as I did only that which they accepted, was I valued. And I am not of the things they are or hold so dear. I see something different.

Alone in our hotel room, Husband, quiet and patient, waited for my words.

In those afternoon hours came back the well of self erasure. Feral I felt in my unlovableness. My little girl, so bereft and lost. Not worth their time.

And then it passed. Well, I am worth mine.

And sadly, so much of each of them is worth my time. All that may never come. So…

Early flights back to SF, NM. And oh I am so glad to be here in this home I hadn’t left even for a night for 3 full years til a week ago today.

News came through yesterday of a Deer Friend’s passing. This Friend Twinkled at all of us who knew him well or from a distance. Posts come through from his Lovely Rock Photo Wife who has walked beside him since their early years many many moons ago. He went swiftly. And he touched all who knew him with his elegance and grace. His dogs knew how deeply his soul loved them.

As the weekend’s tunnel begins to open back to now, I am relieved for this next generation’s coming up. They are well defined, each on their own terms and loved by hearts who get them. I felt the distance between us, but that is as it should be and is just fine.

Life is quickening. Sixty-four means youth is behind and age has come. Wheel is turning swiftly.

Tea was Senchaed Green

Ta.