This fall both of our children are "back to school" outside of the home. It would be a breathtaking vacuum around here except that their departures coincided perfectly with our move from forest into town. I'm spending these first few childless weeks unpacking from our life on Orcas Island and the rich nine months we were nestled in the Deschutes National Forest. Each afternoon Baanko is assessing my work and staking her claim on pieces of that learning-rich time together that she is not willing to retire. We are setting up a "project room" where The Warthog School and our Raising The Red Tent endeavors can continue to grow.
Today we both took a pause from our new work. We both had stomach aches. Baanko was weathering exposure to the ever changing microbiota of her shared classroom. I was not weathering well my exposure to Dr. Blasley Ford's prepared testimony at the Senate Judiciary hearing. The sun rose with a promise of what could be the last truly hot day before winter's inevitable coming and cast long early rays on our recently recovered radio flyer. Baanko hatched a plan, packed carefully, and declared, "I think we can do Wild Child Wednesday even on a Thursday." It was decided. We both needed the benefit.
All afternoon we played on the river's bank. She taught her dolly to fish and I sketched a scene that was all out of perspective. Only my daughter's image at the center seemed to reflect reality. Her image was complete, I realized, because she is still whole. Her life is still on track to be different. The little yellow boot, the fallen branch that she'd imagined into fishing gear, and her wind tossed hair all flowed from my hand with ease. She is effortlessly all right. Beyond her, however, I am struggling to capture what is happening in this moment.
I decided, at least for the afternoon, to accept that. When I did, I realized that I am more than struggling to process what is happening around us. "Struggling" isn't a powerful enough word to describe mothering with complex PTSD. Especially when the complex of the trauma includes sexual abuse. I am not struggling I am efforting. Immensely. Daily. In all of the activities that are not deemed by our culture as important work. I am grieving while protecting. I am recovering while educating and preventing. I am tending two young girl children; one who came through my body and is growing up in front of my eyes, and one that forever lives inside of my body ringing adrenaline alarms and ever waiting to be saved. I am working for us within a culture of me. It isn't a struggle. It is a battle of a lifetime.
One from which I need to go AWOL from time to time if not for just an afternoon. To follow the very advice that I used to give to women in recovery: Find a way, whenever possible, to see beyond the common culture which is ever yelling and flashing its content loud and fast in front of your face. I confidently promised each woman that past its dizzying and confusing display they would find a source of steady support for their most authentic sense of self - Nature. To them it probably sounded like a fantasy world. A place where cycles, like those in their own bodies that they had been trained to try overcome or at least ignore, are an authority worthy of trust. Where tending and befriending, connection and cooperation, and all the instincts that are chemically coded into us from birth, are trusted and proven strategies for long term survival and success. Yet the more they retreated to and reflected upon the natural world the more it became their reality of choice. The number one observation I heard as feedback from them was that things were finally "making sense". From my vantage point, I was observing women coming to their senses. They returned from nature alive and enlivened in spite of all they had suffered up unto the present moment.
Our Wild Child Wednesday outings are a weekly "coming to my senses" and somehow Baanko knew I needed it this past Thursday. The Deschutes River runs 55 degrees F late September and she insisted that I at least submerge my feet. My attention became naturally absorbed; the heat of the last summer-like day, foliage warming our landscape with deep reds and golden yellows, the sound of geese migrating above us, the scraping of Baanko's two twigs enacting her imaginary need-fire to cook her imaginary fish, the smell of cool grass up close to the dirt. By afternoon's end I was a sense-able woman again. I had been put back together by following the lead of someone who has never come apart.
Baanko narrated our walk home with expressions of awe about different trees turning new colors and animals she spotted on both river bank and neighborhood streets. To the back drop of her wonder I marched a strong steady path back to the home that I am ever tending.
I am sufficiently recharged and ready to pick up what I believe to be important work. I am ready again. To be sensible. To be of use.
"To Be Of Use" by Marge Piercy.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
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