Thoughts on Becoming

I am inspired by gray, cloud-filled, windy, rainy days. I am persuaded to write, to read – just to be. Today is not one of those days, but I am still energized to be fresh, awake – alive. As I sit here on my porch, I take in the morning. I woke early, as I always do, but today I laid in bed and read for a while. I felt delicious and decadent, and I rolled over, desiring to sleep, believing I wouldn’t, and I did not. Jimi-kitty does not like me lying in bed; I am not sure why, but he meows and seems agitated on mornings I think I want to lie in. He jumped up and laid on the pillow tucked under my arm, kitty purrs and kitty kisses deployed. I petted him a good long while, while Nico, big kitty-boy that he is, lay stretched out, pushed up against my left leg as it crossed over my right. Finally, I stretched, sat up and rose, thanking God and my angels for my restful sleep, but also for my waking. I showered, made coffee, fed Echo, cleaned the kitty box, rearranged a few plants on the porch and now, here I sit on a beautiful Sunday morning, pen and notebook in front of me.

It’s cool still, but as the sun rises it brings heat with it. The birds are not in the feeder, but I can hear them in the trees all around me. I wish I knew how to identify birds by their song better than I do, but I don’t. I hear cardinals calling – easy to identify. I can pick out frog-song; that steady low, sweet sound that often sounds like crickets singing in the grass. There is a slight breeze causing a gentle undulation in the tree tops; leaves flutter softly all around; the beautiful, romantic silvery, gray-green Spanish moss swaying as it hangs low to the ground from tree branches. There seems to be an excessive sound of traffic on the distant highway and on the main road to town; I am not sure why so early on Sunday morning. The world will slowly start creeping in again soon, I know. The pandemic has caused so much less reason to be out and about, and early this Sunday morning, it seems others must have more reason than I to be away from home.

A crow flies out over the pasture, the sound of its calls echoing, haunting. For some reason my thoughts went to Black Lake, and I had a memory of crows and ravens calling to each other over the field behind the house on summer mornings. I’ve never associated crow calls with Black Lake before, but today, for some reason, they did. Prior to the crow I was thinking of my love of outdoors; of sunshine shimmering, sparkling on the gossamer threads of last night's spider webs woven in the grass, swinging quietly in the morning breeze. I was thinking of how much I love these peaceful moments, yet how for so long I let this slide from myself. I would sit late into the night at home as a youth, listening to the soothing sound of the fan in my window, a quietly dim lamp shining on my paper and pen, the gold-green brocade of the chair beneath me rough, as I traced the patterns with my left fingertips, even as I wrote with my right. I thought of how it felt as I sat in the window of my dorm room, late at night, watching life below, quiet, dark, silent, yet someone always out and about; when would life happen to me, for me? And I would imagine my life, my future – when it would all begin. Poetry was always close in my heart, in my fingertips, on my paper back then. As an adult I let that poetry dry from my life, from my thoughts, and yet, it remained in my heart always. I thought of how, as an adult of 38 it came crashing back into my life in a big way – and I realized I’d forgotten who that teen was; that passionate, full-of-life teen who wrote poetry was; where did she go? In the twenty years since that awakening; that collision into myself again, I’ve written, a lot. Good, bad; reams of notebooks full. I’ve laughed and cried, struggled, lived, wrote – or not. I’ve discovered the life I thought I would find back then, the life I imagined as a teen sitting in that dorm room or sitting in that gold chair late nights while the rest of the house slept. I’ve found the life I thought I would have, prior to meeting Steve.



I’m still in the process of becoming, even now, as I sit here on my porch, listening to birdsong, watching moss sway, seeing spiderwebs glisten in the sunshine; the raucous call of crows adding to the musical track. Even now, I continue to become who it is I was meant to be. Each and every day; it’s a new adventure, a new world, a new life full of new chances. And I am still becoming Me.