Space and Time and the Kosmicegg

This morning I was walking my dog, Lucille. It was a perfect summer morning. Not too hot yet. The sun was shining and there was not a cloud in the sky. A soft breeze blew through the trees that have done with their pollination and have started bearing fruit. There was a guy hauling a para sail up the mountain that I later watched circle down in a white swirl. In the shade of the pricey neighborhood just South of my public housing compound, my heart swelled with an appreciation for being in this place at this moment.

It always seems to happen for me this way: I really settle into a place and figure out how it works and learn to feel I like it, and then it is time to move.

I've moved about 20 times in 25 years. Maybe even more. I moved five times year before last year alone. I thought of starting a packing business called 20x.

So, on my walk I was thinking about how I've grown to accept and even like my neighborhood of late. I've imagined someday being able to buy a house in the pricey neighborhood south of my public housing compound. I have liked the way the gardens grow over there, and the trees are mature, more or less for Colorado, and there are places with sidewalks, and a little reservoir of water to walk around, and trails that are pretty gentle to walk Lucille on, and the god parks, I mean dog parks. I have enjoyed walking to the three or four decent coffee houses within just 20 minutes walk at the most.

Now, I'm moving away, really away from this place. I am so glad to get beyond public housing. I am moving into a place with the man I love and with the children at least half time. The place I'm moving to is just as different from this place as it can be. It may be funky to have chosen such a starkly different place, but truth be told the place I am moving to really feels relaxing to me. It's a future I dreamed of often when I was roaming and moving five times in that year after the divorce.

It's just funny to me now because it isn't the place I dreamed of from here. So I'm beginning to see how slow the law of attraction can be, how slow and purposeful. Because instead of being this completely vast improvement in my life from homelessness to having this great place, it is a medium or incremental step from a simple home to a little bit more.

That got me thinking about trajectory, how little shifts in intention lead us through life. We dream in a very limited way and the Universe lines it up for us fast enough to feel like something has happened but slow enough so that we don't implode from the change.

I started to feel sad on my beautiful walk when I thought, "Well, there's the root of disappointment!" I figured out that this constant companion of mine, called regret, really comes from space and time limitations. Because not everything I dream up is possible within the confines of space and time, within the limitations of the Kosmicegg that is this life alone.

It is only when the dream aligns with the people in my life that the incremental and lasting changes finally happen. Then some things necessarily fall away because they don't harmonize with the person who I'm dreaming with...like the failed marriage happened because my dream and my ex-husband's dream fell apart sometime like seven years ago. It took until nearly three years ago for it to become so apparent that it couldn't be ignored, and still another six months before it could be acted upon. And, only now seven years later, am I feeling like I'm making the kind of sustainable, reasonable progress that I dreamt of shortly after 9/11. What felt like a sudden change, really took at least seven years to finally manifest -- perhaps, largely because of my resistance.

Then the progress my new love and I have made to harmonize our lives is really remarkable. It has taken a mere three years to come to a near perfect agreement since I first laid eyes on him. Still there is more that we're planning together, and some of it is still vague enough to be a mystery. And the gracious part of it is that he doesn't expect it to be a fast and sudden road to change, and I'm beginning to understand the virtue of patience! And, yes, I met this man at precisely the time that lack of harmony in my marriage had become perfectly apparent, though, I had no clue that this man I picked up at the airport for a workshop and barely spoke to would one day be my man.

I can say that right away I loved his laugh. At the time I met this man I longed for real, hearty laughter that had no cruelty in it. A little incremental shift in my perception of what I wanted in my life. It was really that simple. Isn't the Kosmicegg amazing?

Breathless

Sometimes change comes so fast that it leaves you breathless.

I generally avoid changes like these because they're so uncomfortable. Even a breathless change takes a few months to fully bloom. Thank God for time. Thank You for time to unfold change. What would we do without it?

A few months from now I know that my life will have a new feel to it. I know it without a doubt because I've been through these changes before even though I've tried to avoid them. I know this change is simply a change and that the point is to stay neutral no matter what, but I have to say I'm pretty excited.

Why do we get excited about change? Do we imagine that the external change will change us inside? Of course, it never does and then we have to deal with ourselves in a new environment or set of circumstances. The problems that get resolved by a change morph into a new set of problems for our egos to crack open over time. This is what makes storytelling great -- when one set of problems gets exchanged for a new set of problems. This is what makes the Bible such a great book. Never ending change, never ending problems to deal with and it is relentless.

And, yet we still believe in improvement and progress. We're so funny.

Today I am happy. I am in a committed relationship that I'm so proud of it brings tears to my eyes just to think of it. This man has come to me and met me where I am and loves me in spite of everything that I've done and keep on doing in spite of my best intentions to be changed! He says luck has nothing to do with it, but I don't know how to express how I feel about it other than to say, "I feel very lucky."

He's moving here as early as next week because he has been offered a good job, better than the one he has now. The rest of the summer will be about deciding how we live. Will we move in together? Will we stay separate for a while longer? What is the best thing for our financial well-being? What is the best thing for our hearts? What is the best thing for the children? They say they want to live together, but do they really? Are they ready to have a black man in their lives for the rest of their lives, just because Mom is ready? Should I even be concerned about that? Is there anyway to live my life if I only think of their lives?

My son said, "I will be the only kid in my class with a black step-father. I will be the most different of everyone." He also said, "I hope you marry him, Mom."

My daughter is all wrapped up in the trappings of the wedding -- though we may decide eloping is the wisest option. In fact, this is a moral question as well. Do I believe we should be married before we live together? Am I that old-fashioned? In a way I am, not so much for me but for my kids. Again, I find it difficult to make a decision about any of this without considering how it impacts them.

My hope is that we'll live together because I believe that the stability card will trump the fear card. I feel like it is a deep shift, deeper than I know, and so even though I hope one thing, I will take as much of a breath as I can take during this breathless change. I must find patience in my large bag of tricks and let the petals of this change unfold with a neutral point of view. Do you think I can do it?