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Life, lived properly, can take us on some pretty wild rides. It can take us a long, long way off the map, and that's the best way to find beautiful new places. Sometimes, though, the process of getting lost can leave us a little shaken and disoriented. Ever look up from your work and wonder where the fuck you are and how the fuck you got there? Yeah, that. Regardless of where you've ended up, that moment comes.

When it does, old friends are the touchstone, the centering force we come back to.

I've been a mom for a little over two years. A single mom for the better part of that time. A caregiver and corporate slack for nearly four. Now I'm an entrepreneur. It's not the life that I had planned. It's better. It's different. It's crazy. It's frustrating. It's amazing.

Lately though, I've been feeling a little alien here, in this domestic bliss. It's a far cry from where I was just a few years ago - storm lashed and all alone but for a cat and a bike and a writing desk.

I've spent the last twenty or so years of my life wandering and writing, beholden to no one but myself. It was wild and completely irresponsible, and in the end it wasn't working for me anymore, but it is a part of who I am. It's a part that's been put on hold while I care for my family. It's always there, though, burning signal fires from waveswept shores and peering out of cedar forests, waiting for me to return. Waiting for me to get it right.

My oldest friends recognize that part in me - just like I recognize it in them. With old friends there is a shared, if diverging, history. Of course, they see the woman I've become - the one who cooks three squares a day for a gaggle of family, who is opening her very first business, who herds wild children. But they also see all the things that came before. They see the whole, and that gives them a special place in my life.

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a few days with people who have been in my life for many, many years. It was like coming in from the cold. I've been working my ass off for the past few years; I didn't even realize I'd started running on empty. Those few days - the friends, the conversation, the food, the hugs - filled me up.

We converged in the city where we'd all grown up.We sat in livingrooms and hotel rooms and talked; we sat around dinner tables and in bars and talked; we caught up on years of life because yes life has flung us far. We gave hugs and shared stories of children and divorce, broken hearts and the deaths of parents. We quietly compared laugh lines and were blown away by how well we've all aged.

We're grownups now, twenty years later, and we're all on our own ride, and we all know how wild the ride can get. In those rooms, lit bright against the dark, we found in each other a grounding point. We were reassured that life is big and sometimes kind of scary, but so, so worth it. We told each other that we are doing well, and we are. We've taken on some pretty big challenges - art, music, writing, parenthood - and we're all finding our paths. It was good for the soul to see us all fumbling toward success, making it in our own way.

The days have wound down now, and we've all returned to the ride to be scattered far and wide again. This time though, we are filled up and ready to fight again for whatever dream we are chasing.

Y'all know who are. Thanks for a great weekend.

 

Beauty Abounds

*this post is featured at Indie Ink *

I am thinking of you this morning, driving from the cabin to the lake. Tires crunching on gravel, one hand holding my coffee cup, the other on the steering wheel. I give a country wave to the two ladies who walk our road every morning; two fingers raised from the wheel and a smile.

I am driving my son to the beach to go swimming. He loves the water. Small brown feet kick the base of his carseat as he looks out the window, naming as he goes.
"Wa." he says, definitively.
"Yes babe. Water."
"Bee." He says. Beach.

He will be two this summer: my oldest. My youngest, back at the cabin with his great aunt, is nearly seven months old. Neither of my children were planned, were certainly not expected, but I  love them more than anything I have ever loved. I can barely remember what life was like before them. Maybe I don't want to.

We flit down this narrow road through boreal forest, through bright morning sunlight and deep cool shade. Our windows rolled down, the scent of pine and fir heavy in the humid air. It's good to be back on the Canadian Shield. My heart holds a place open for this space; for the Thomsonesque rock sliding into lake after lake after lake, for the early morning and late evening paddles, for the deep dark forests, for the bears and loons and deer. It feels like home. And it reminds me of you.

I wonder, is your little corner of paradise anything like mine? Do you sit in the dark and watch fireflies, listen to the haunting call of loons out on the lake? Do you hike in the forest, sidestepping the lichens at your feet? Is there a canoe that takes you out gliding over the water in the early morning?

I wonder how you are. Are you happy? I imagine you are busy - it would surprise me greatly to hear otherwise.  Are you in love or, like me, are you satisfied with solitude for now?  I know you are doing what makes your soul come alive, and for that I will always be grateful. It makes me indescribably happy to see my friends succeed in whatever they choose to bend themselves to.

The road dips and twists; suddenly a deer appears. It bounces away into the brush, a flash of tan and then nothing.

"Deew!" My boy misses nothing from his perch in the backseat. His bright eyes take in everything through his window on the world.

He's a smart little guy, no doubt about it. And he's going to be trouble, I can tell already. He has a stubborn streak in him a mile wide and very definite ideas about how his world is going to be. He makes me want to laugh and kiss his chubby cheeks; to cry and tear my hair out and run screaming to the nearest bar, often all at once. In short, he is his mother's son.

I am reminded of our own parents in the farflung years of our youth - how my father's dark hair turned grey over the course of my high school years, how your mother would be waiting for us no matter how late we stayed out or how sneaky we thought we were being. It's laughable now to think of what we thought we were getting away with. It's heartwrenching too, knowing now what we put our parents though. But we were kids; we didn't know any better. We were just finding our way in the world - more bravado than brains, more energy than foresight.

I think of how, when we were so young, we swore we would never grow apart, no matter where life took us, no matter how old we got. When 30 seems an inconceivable age, it's hard to put life into perspective. And so we have drifted, in exactly the ways that our teenage hearts told us we would never. We no longer spend each and every weekend sleeping over at each other's houses. We don't read to one another from our journals anymore. We don't spend summers travelling, hitchhiking, going to music festivals anymore. Because life is what it is, and nothing stays the same forever, thank g-d.

We've lived and loved and traveled and ate and drank and created, and while did, we became women. Formidable women; independent, strong, willful and creative. I'm proud of who I am, where I've been, what I've done. I'm excited for the future. I hope you are too. I know I'm proud of you. And I'm glad you never took that job at the bank.

I cut the engine at the beach and look out at the water. The wind whips waves into whitecaps; foam sprays from the tops and is blown away in an instant. I'm tempted to try another lake, another beach facing away from the wind. It's early morning cool still, and I worry about my small fry. But I can see he is already twisting in his seat. He's seen the beach, and it's time to go. He doesn't give two shits about the whitecaps; we're here and he wants to do stuff. If it's not perfect, oh well. We'll beachcomb instead of swim. This kid is teaching me things already.

I release him from his carseat trap and he hits the ground running, down toward the water. I watch him go, as fast as his little legs can propel him, and think of you one last time before I join in on yet another adventure.

I miss you, and I hope adventure is finding you today, too.