Just Keep Trying

The world seems to be falling apart before my eyes, a whirlwind of careless decisions, a twister of thoughtless bravado taking lives, taking our way of life.  My heart aches.  Some days I feel like I can’t go on.  What will be left for the future?  The mother in me mourns for my children.

I know I am not the only mother worried.  Mother Nature seems ambivalent too.  In a single day, she shifts:  the temperature is 75 degrees in the afternoon, 17 degrees when night falls; sunshine turns to frost with snow to my knees by morning.  In the transition a strong wind wails and rattles my windows, Mother Nature weeping, perhaps.

My therapy had been regular walks along a shared use path near my home, but on too many days the weather got the upper hand and I lounged at home instead of exercising.  But yesterday I said “enough!”  And I set out for a walk along my usual path.  Deconditioned from the long, unpredictable winter, I immediately began negotiating with myself for a shorter walk.  With every step, I chose a new turn-around-for-home spot, yet a part of me continued to ache for my old self, for that familiar strength and vigor, and, so, that old self kept arguing with the weary, deconditioned one:  Turn back.  Just to the next intersection.  Stop here…and so it continued.  It was not the pleasant, mindful walk of my yesterdays.

Normally, when times and weather were normal that is, I would take two laps around the giant commercial parking lot at the end of the path.  Yesterday, I thought about avoiding the lot altogether, but the negotiations picked up: maybe ONE lap.  As I got halfway around, I turned into a smaller sub-lot next to the outdoor exercise area for employees.  There I noticed tree branches and twigs sprayed all over the grass and pushed to the edges of the lot by the strong winds.  They had come to a stop in a heap along the asphalt curb.  In one of the short piles my eyes came to rest on a piece of a branch.  It was broken, about two inches long, stripped of its graying bark.  What was left was a beautiful stub in a rich burnt sienna, one of my favorite colors in the Crayola box.  I picked it up.  It was as light as a Styrofoam pellet and as soft as my grandmother’s cheek.  There was something about the color and the softness and the strength of this broken piece that I could not part with it, and so I put into my pocket. My fingers rubbed against it as I made the second lap and returned to my home.  Mission accomplished.  I was back!  Back to walking, back to myself. I placed the small piece of the broken tree branch on my desk where I continued to study it.

I leave it there now in plain sight to remind me that there can be beauty even in a debris field; things can break and still be strong.  Just a piece can still serve us, still feed our inner hungers. 

“Hang on wherever you land,” the broken but strong and beautiful piece tells me.  Someone will find you.  You will find each other.  One lap or two?  It doesn’t matter.  What matters is that we just keep trying.