Two isn’t much less than three. Except when it is.
Cooking for this version of us looks different from the version which is no longer and I’m still adjusting. For a long time I kept cooking too much oatmeal, too much pasta, and buying too many groceries.
This morning I cooked the perfect portion of Irish oats and allowed the bliss of that to accompany each spoonful, lightly drizzled with maple syrup, a pinch of salt.
I still sleep all the way on one side of the bed, which I believe is to better reach my books, my daughter’s books, my glasses and phone and water and hand balm and lip balm and lamp and essential oils- you know, the essential bedtime everythings.
It also leaves room for my sleepy star to climb in at twilight.
The space that’s created with loss can feel agonizing, and did, but not always or in every way. Not now.
There are pangs. But they were there before too, to some extent. So many of my most painful losses have been about what I’d hoped to have, what I’d convinced myself I did have, what I’d hoped something would become, and then finally facing what it presently was and making a choice. This is a particular kind of loss I think- not better or worse than any other- just particular.
Letting go has been the bravest, most awful, and truest thing I’ve maybe ever done. It has taken at least a year and I’m still adjusting to the negative spaces- some of which felt like an immediate relief and others that still squinch my face with pain. Still others are revealing themselves over time. Like a butterfly cracking open its cocoon, discovering the strength of its own wings to break through the shell, which now needs to be left behind, back to the earth.
A time will come for stepping lightly forward, with wonder, curiosity, and courage, toward the edge of the branch, looking out at an expansive, mysterious sky, rather than the solid ground it had known.
How does it know how to fly?
The butterfly doesn’t stop then, at the branch’s edge, to weigh all of its possible future outcomes. She doesn’t walk back down to the dirt to find caterpillars to consult with, or creep to the next branch over to ask another butterfly for advice.
She is quiet. Still. Then she feels, she senses, she hears from some internal place that it is time. She trusts that she will know what to do next because in fact her body is already leading her forward. Her wings are already softly opening, then closing. Opening, closing, feeling the sensation of the air, feeling the momentum she creates with her own energy, with what she already has within her.
She steps off the branch now, trusting in nothing but what she feels in her own depths, and in an instant her wings meet the air and she is gliding. It’s as if everything that’s happened in her insect life up until now was preparing her for this moment. She is serene, exultant, and splendorous.
Those still on the ground look up at her with awe and admiration, witnessing her flight, unaware of the slog through the dark that preceded it. She will glide, dance, and twirl a while, learning the ways of her new wings as well as a brand new environment, the sky. Eventually the wind will pick up, the rain will come, the sun will beat down, a chill will pierce her body, and with these challenges she’ll once again adjust, sensing into what she needs, for rest, for protection, for sustenance, for which way to go next.
Jaclyn Edds Konczal | February 2022