Hopefully we don't have to wait for the piece until next spring. Until then...
RAMBLINGS
Rover and Billy were up to their usual shenanigans. I never quite knew if the dogs, or I, enjoyed our walks more on the farm road. Certainly I had grown up doing journeys on this roadway but after living away for some thirty years the way was less trodden. Perhaps I embraced the experience more now than as a child.
On this fourth day of Christmas the beauty of the world about me nearly took my breath away as it so often did. Usually the winter scene was less appealing. This day, however, was different than I had ever recalled. Fog had been hanging around for the past few days, waiting for some exciting sideline. The glittery glamour had shone for anyone to take notice on the rare occasions the sun chose to shine. When the wind interfered with the jewel quality, or the sun was not sharing its radiance, my walks were short. At least I did not linger much to glance about. My throbbing need for sunbeams to warm my soul brought me to hurry so that I might find sunlight from some other source - words on a page or colours in a magazine.
Today the sun was not shining through the grey. Rain was threatening. The sky had been sketched heavily with charcoal.The blanket of trees on the creeks hillside was woven of comforting browns, charcoals, blacks, and platinum. Silver threads were interspersed in natures perfect tapestry.
The dogs - I had no inkling of their whereabouts. Quite honestly, I was momentarily unaware of my own presence on that road. I lost sense of the motion of my feet. Maybe I was not really moving at all. Where had I traveled? I wondered in my mind's eye if this was anything like Jesus saw as He hung nailed to the cross. Amidst all the greyness of the world did He recognize the magic about to happen?
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At times I wonder what it would be like to be totally inside the brain of another being. There is a spattering of desire and then I move on. The inclination is not so much to know what the other thinks about me. It is more the wish to see the world through another's eyes. I believe through my sensitivity and ability to empathize I have had tiny glimpses into the minds of others. I have also felt as though another was inside my own thoughts when they were empathizing with me. At times I felt amazed. At times I felt frightened. Mostly, if I allowed, I felt comforted, strengthened.
On this day, as my feet were maybe, or not, touching the ground, when the magic seemed to be in the chill air where frost had touched and rain was threatening, the tapestry brought me to ponder on my daughter's thoughts. Her labels of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) both suggested "muddled"? pathways in the brain. Certainly her behaviour and thinking sometimes seemed to indicate the possibility. Though much intervention has been applied, my thoughts lingered on what her brain might see. Her eye may see something similar to my own, but most certainly her brain would not. Of course no one's brain would see exactly the same because of differences in past experience and knowledge. However I am led to understand that someone with ADHD may see the world as a blurred television picture with much static. I suppose that is what made me desire to enter her thoughts that day when I saw so much contrast, so many shades of grey and brown and black and white. I tried to imagine not having the "eye"? to see the contrast, the differences. I suspected it would all be one dull, monotonous smear. I tried not to dwell on how depressed I feel when I sense so much greyness about me.
This was certainly not the first time I had the penchant to enter my daughter's thoughts. Other times were when she amazed me with comments far beyond her age. Considering the "muddledness" of her thought pathways I sometimes wondered from "whence came the knowledge of the elders"? Typically these comments came at "the most splendid of times to talk with your child", that is, while we were on a road trip. Her level of comfort still occasionally leans toward her needing or desiring to hold her baby doll. The awesome times would bring discussions of birth control, angels, birth mothers and Jesus. Her insights - at times I felt inspired.
Now, as I take a large comforting breath for myself, I will allow my fleeting thoughts of entering the mind of someone else to flow gently over me. I will be grateful for the opportunity to see what I see, for myself, and to have those minutest of nanoseconds to peer briefly into the universe of another.
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