I’m sitting with my new and old heart. Feeling into what has lived within me before, and what is newly arriving here. Now.
Now is not really now.
It is the presence of love’s uprising of remembrance. Uprooting and growing new roots inside of me. Tools planted long ago.
I remember hearing the beauty of a teaching: generations that planted seeds for a tree to grow so that there would be shade for their great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren to sit beneath. I remember being awestruck by this extraordinary gesture.
As I sit in some of the quiet I continue to cultivate, I recognize this is the legacy my beloved grandmother has grown inside of me. Roots that help my find my way. Offer me navigation. Stewardship. Companionship. Compassion. Mercy. Tenderness. Forgiveness. Spaciousness.
Humor. Openness. Light. Optimism. Clarity. Purpose.
Nourishment in forms I had not recognized before.
Self-forgiveness for my own mistakes.
I look out at the world through her eyes which often become my own, and I see that I don’t know the difference between a full generation that I do not witness until it is reflected beneath the tree she planted. Until the day I go and lay my body beneath her. Until I see the colors that continue to change radically and regularly. And become soft next to her silken skin inside those crevices.
I look in the mirror now and see her face and hear the sound of her voice. And then I feel my belly soften and laugh. Laugh sweetly and then loud. Loud because I have missed something and then suddenly caught it. Just the way she did. A sign of my elder. Of lost years never to be found yet captured somewhere else in the lives of others. In other places across the world. In other homes. In other bellies. In other beds. In other urns. Yet, still in a heart that holds love as remembrance, and as a bearer of light.
A sound that was once embattled inside my belly now carries me. The very same sound of yesterday is now. Now. Now is a rush of countless nows. Boundless countless beautiful nows.
Beautiful belly countless rushing nows of love.
My grandmother was wise to sow those seeds.
I am carried. God chose a good one to plant them. It may have taken a long time for me to find where they grew. I now know how lucky I am. To hold what has been forgotten. To hold what can be remembered. To stay. To stay open. To listen. To listen to love. To love. To be loved. Now.
Carried by love.
12.1.2024
Jill Bacharach
