New Spirals

Today, as I sit in meditation, I pray I will see you, and I see myself as I am. The image comes immediately. I am a small but heavy dark stone at the bottom of a glass of champagne. I am feeling the heaviness of your absence as the next season begins, as I anticipate the holidays without you. There is a joy and lightness around me that I cannot deny, and some of me is feeling it too. Part of me is submerging myself in the coolness of autumn and in the wonder of the sky that is clear blue in the morning and star filled at night. I can still merge soulfully in the Us when I am under the dome of sky. And, there is a heaviness in my heart. Part of me sinks to the bottom today, even as I feel your presence around me, golden and light. I can reach through it, be in it, and sit in my stillness at the bottom of this glass well watching you rise all around me wishing I could be more like the bubbles. I miss you. I love you. Thank you.

On Saturday, my legs dangled over the edge of the human-made protective concrete wall around Jacob’s Well. At another time not so long ago, my legs were rhythmically circling in the cool and crystal clear waters of this sacred place. Over eleven years ago, when I stood on the limestone shelf of the well’s opening, I was up to my chest in the spring water with Ellie as she took her first swim at three weeks old.

Ellie and I, on that day, were only repeating what has occurred at the well for as long as it has existed. These waters have been a place of gathering for animals, native peoples, and those who settled here in the 1850s. It has been a source of life for the cycle of life, and is still the aquifer serving those living in the area. But, so much has changed and happened since the headwaters of Cypress Creek flowed freely. It was so recent, just a few years ago, that humans of all ages squealed from that childlike place that lives in each of us as they jumped from the high rocks plunging into the well. And, that is just the joy and wonder that lives near the surface of this magical place. Divers have explored the depths of the magnificent, mysterious, and dangerous underwater cave system, the second longest fully submerged cave in Texas. Some explorers have even died doing so. The desire to go deep into the darkness where few have ventured is something I understand. For some of us, it is a calling.  

I have never seen the water in this well so mirky, so low below ground level as it is now. The limestone is chalky white around us having baked in the sun all summer long. Maybe Mother Earth is also feeling internal, holding her precious waters close, grieving the losses and changes, contemplating and remembering, and waiting to make her next move when she is ready. Only the fish who live in the well and swim deep in the underground caves know her heart. 

The Supermoon, the Harvest Moon, recently hung heavy above us, so present to our existence and experience. When it was closest to Earth and to us in its elliptical orbit, it was my wishing well in the sky. It was so close beside us a few weeks ago, so near to us. And now, it is already so far away, the farthest it can get from us in its orbit culminating in a partial eclipse, but somehow still capable of casting a shadow on the light. It feels like that with Edmond, too. So close and near, touchable in one moment, and now far from me yet still so palpable. He is both a light and shadow of my life in the ways he is knowable and still a mystery to me. 

Several of us living in the path of the annular eclipse circled around the quiet, still waters of Jacob’s Well. We sang and drummed and played the singing bowl as an offering and connection to this place and its waters. We sat together and watched the algae encrusted well walls as foraging fish and tiny turtles peeked up at us. Together with the marine and wildlife, we all watched the sky where the moon passed in front of the sun. At the peak of the eclipse, when shadows were crescent shapes on drums, concrete, limestone, and our bodies, the birds went silent and the wind came through. A strange, eerie filter fell over us. It was like being in a waking dream, and I almost expected our voices to sound more hollow when we spoke. Maybe they did.  

Sitting there right at the center of ourselves at the well, my friend eloquently and prayerfully announced that we were beginning a new spiral. Hearing her words of truth, and knowing we were in our birth place at the center of a new cycle, tears flowed from my eyes. I offered my tears and grief of the days behind me to the well. A liminal moment in time—filtered through darkness and light, strange shadows, silence, and sound—was the paradox of birth erupting in the midst of death. 

The humidity from the day before had lifted revealing a crystal clear day. Another day without Edmond, I stepped through the door into a new season, a new cycle. Each small change comes through the door with us. Wishes longing to materialize squeeze and rush through the portal of a new spiral as we willingly cross the threshold, or are pushed through by various forces. We have wished for and have now been granted cooler, shorter days when the night begins to take over. This is the beginning of the quiet that autumn invites that leads to the winter, a hibernation into the internal places of contemplation, reflection, and rest. It all feels so much more intense without him. My willingness is sparse, and so I wait for what will carry me through.

Parts of me resist walking through these doors, these thresholds of change. I am pulled along this path at times by my children becoming teenagers and for whom time will not stop. My mama heart aches as my children step through so easily, tugging on the knotted threads that I must have tied thinking I could stall time until I was ready for them to grow up. I also burst in delight for them as these changes happen: new friends, new experiences, and new freedoms. Their flow infects me and beckons me to come with them over the threshold. Most of me does.

I reinvented William’s room with him, and made it more of a teenager’s space with all of his baseball artifacts. Only one of the airplane pictures will remain on his walls. He is ready for something different, something new. I painted the walls, and I also painted the old shelves that were originally an open pantry at another house in another season of life. Those shelves have served so many purposes, and now they hold his things. His LED lights are up around the perimeter. I still need to repair the basketball hoop with the Astros’s backboard that I painted during COVID. He is still the same boy in motion you loved to watch move through the world, but he is more of a young man in motion and moving into new realms. I know you are so proud of who he is becoming. You had so much to do with the foundation that continues to serve him. For the most part, his room is coming along and so is he. Your desk, the one that belonged to your grandfather, is now William’s. I only got paint on the ceiling in one little spot, and did a good job cutting in. I was not as exact as you would have been, but it works. It is easier to clean out and let go of things the kids have outgrown than it is to even contemplate clearing out your belongings. It still isn’t time to do that. Ellie’s room is next, and we are still working out the details. She watched the eclipse from the upper deck of my studio-office by herself. She is so cool. She captured some of the best photos, which is not surprising. I love that our children, all of them, appreciate the mysteries of the universe, the events that are cosmic and those that are smaller, more subtle and tender.

We are also in the path of the total eclipse that will occur on April 8, 2024, when the moon is much closer to Earth again and will obscure the Sun entirely. When this happens, Edmond will have been dead a year and four days. That seems impossible. I am not ready.

These eclipse events are cycles that are not always experienced in any one lifetime. We know of their occurrences from the ancient writings and cave paintings. These documentations are our connection to the people of the past, and we leave photographs for the humans of the future that we will never know directly. That is the thing about the spiral movement of cyclical patterns, they continue. You can count on them. Life and death and life again. We begin again, over and over.

On the heels of the deaths of our first marriages, we came together, birthing our relationship with each other. The shadows of our respective divorces were certainly an eclipse hovering over us as we dared to start a new spiral together. We knew the pain and heartache of investing in a partnership that ended, and we did it again anyway. I suppose that is the thing about staying and living; we do keep beginning again, being open to the next iteration of ourselves and new relationships. And, for now, like the part of the Earth that is Jacob’s Well, part of me is also going internal, hiding my dark waters in the stillness of the womb. I am diving deeply into the cavernous places of the softest, darkest, quietest parts of myself. I am sitting in silence and stillness until I am ready.