Ok, this is rewarding...but not easy!

The type-A personality in me is humbled by this sculpture - yes, Jill, you are human...

A couple of things I am learning today: This is work and going through two decades of personal history is like dropping a piano on my own head!  

This morning the blank page did stare me down and when I went through all of my years of writing, I found that I needed to do it in bed with a box of tissues next to me!  Sometimes no matter how hard you plan (Miss Type-A-Jill!) things shall go another way...another lesson (re-)learned.

Clearly, at the very least, a transition day needs to happen as I transform from mom-teacher-wife to temporarily, solely myself - all the good, bad or ugly that made me who I am right now!  As the fog lifted, I kept on.  I took a break and started a painting.  Then I picked one metaphor that I really love that I recently revisited both in writing and in "real-life."  If any younger mommies are reading, The Swing became a huge part of our school year at Milestones this year.  So many of the children learned to pump on their own. Similar to when children learn to ride a bike, the moment is full of elation and magic. What adult doesn't remember what that felt like?  I have crystal clear memories of swinging as  a young child and can also still hear my dear departed grandmother reciting Robert Louis Stevenson's poem of The Swing from A Child's Garden of Verses.  Anyway, I am going to share a bit of the writing I did today, using the swing as a metaphor...

Like a pendulum the barefoot, smiling child goes back and forth.  Joyful. Up in the air so blue. Her hair shining in the sun, giggles drifting through the warm summer breeze.  Our childhood simplicity and innocence emerges, illuminated through this one fluid act. The to and fro motion, not unlike a cradle rocking, alternating in rhythm; blue sky, green grass, blue sky, green grass...  She feels like a bird.  If only the swing could act as a time machine and her adult self could go back to that idyllic freedom layered in the security of home like a warm blanket.

I'll keep working on that piece, but if all I have to show for today is the beginning of that thought, I feel like I got a little somewhere...

On that note, I am going to seek out some nurturing posole somewhere around here. Below are some ancient, colorful windows and doors within the backdrop of that calming adobe...Adieu, cockatoo.

 

Miss Jill's Solo Sojourn in Santa Fe

Sometimes a teacher, or a mother or a wife or a daughter or a person, needs to get away from all that is cherished and familiar, in order to remember why she cherishes those things.  In my particular case, I am of a certain age, my child is in college, my dog died...it's just time.  Time to make a well-planned runaway, an organized displacement, a, as I told myself several decades the last time I did this, writing in my journal on a northbound train, running away from my sensible boyfriend...I needed a significant interruption.  An interruption other than the fabulous one that happened when I learned I was pregnant and began to fall in love with responsibility.  An interruption other than "accidentally" finding "the one" at age 45.

This interruption/displacement/runaway is ALL MINE.

The first one since 1992!  Where I get to choose my adventure, my interruption. So, of course at this point in my life, this choose-my-own-adventure had to be well planned in light of those responsibilities I fell in love with way back when.  But I planned well enough to be able to get away not just physically, but that all too critical, mentally.  Without some mental freedom, an adventure could get wasted.  So I planned.  I paid ahead. I pre-packed for a month!  For these 10 days.

My adventure is one, I realized, that has been brewing in my heart and mind since a very young age (before leaving on this sojourn I re-read all of the journals I have written since 1987.) So this adventure had a place on my newly written bucket list.  An, if-you-don't-do-this-pretty-soon-you-never-will adventure.

I have landed in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I have rented my adorable casita.  I have brought a few boxes containing writing I have done for a couple of decades.  It's time.  We'll see what happens. I seem to be ready to write. No staring at a blank screen or empty sheet of journal-page.  I was so ready to write I even scribbled a few lines while driving!
When I left I was groggy and a bit stressed this morning.  The transition of "getting somewhere" can get in my way of embracing the journey.

 

But lo' and behold, the longer I drove, the more relaxed I became.  I enjoyed the views out my window.  Played an old CD from the 1990's which made me feel 28 again.  And, it almost seemed, the more miles I put behind me, a few layers of skin and wrinkles and years slipped right off of me and it was almost like I was 28 again.

This writing, this blog, is not the writing I am here to do.  This blog is for you, for my same-age mommies who are also embarking on their empty-nest adventures - a flight attendant in the making and a new business owner - you are my inspiration and my confidants and I am reporting to you. This blog is also for my young-mommies who usually read the blog I do about their children.  You mommies may need to do this some day.  So this is for you too.  And, for anyone else I tell about this blog - my family so you can see I'm "okay" and my husband, of course, so you can see I'm really doing stuff! Random friends I think might be vaguely interested in what I am doing. There is no pressure to read this.  It is mostly for fun.  But also, I want to pass along the idea that it is never too late to do some of your dreams...

I rewarded myself for the longest drive I have done solo since age 28 with a delicious green chili cheese burger!  Kirk out.  More tomorrow.