Today I share a piece of writing inspired by my word of the month for April: ABSORB.
In the Slow Friends Community we’re journalling and meditating our way through the seasons this year, using a framework of words to help guide our self-discovery journeys.
THIS MONTH 🌟 I’m giving away some three-month subscriptions for FREE!! 🌟 so if you would like—or know someone who might appreciate this gift—to come and see what it’s all about, please send me an email letting me know why you think this challenge might be good for you and I’ll add you straight away. 🙏🏻
Or you can:
Spring’s Unfailing Wisdom
Absorbing the moment; for now and for then.
She laughed while looking over at me, the gold-infused light of an early spring morning weaving its way effortlessly through her braids, the universe’s way of framing her already radiant face, letting me know that THIS was a moment to absorb.
“I love sitting on locks and swinging my legs. It makes me soooo happy,” she shouted across to me as we watched the chamber filling, the sound of water rushing in our ears.
I looked at my daughter in that moment and committed not only the image to my memory, but also what I could hear, along with the sweet aroma of blossom that danced its way delicately over from the hedgerow. I closed my eyes and soaked it all up before sitting myself down on my side of the lock to swing my own legs, both of us looking over at one another with bright eyes and broad smiles.
Several weeks later as I sat at the bedside of my dying father, holding his hand and reassuring him each time his eyelids fluttered open to reveal the pale yet deep blue colour I’ve known my whole life, I thought of that moment. I thought of all the times I shared moments with him…
The holiday to Cyprus where we larked about in the pool for hours beneath a burning sun, our endless laughter raining down alongside the relentless splashes; mum sitting in the shade, only occasionally peering over the pages of her magazine to smile and check dad wasn’t being too boisterous.
Or the time when we were in the garden playing our favourite game of Bronco Billy, dad crawling around on the grass in the last light of a long summer’s day, me shouting delightedly, “Giddy-up!” And mum shouting at him to be a bit more gentle…which that time proved to be in vain as I ended up with a dislocated elbow.
And then there were the times — many — where I looked into those same eyes for pragmatic advice, or to absorb long-nurtured knowledge, which he would share readily along with great plumes of smoke and sometimes a matter-of-factness that verged on hard, no doubt fragments of his tough childhood growing up in a Northern mining town weaving their way into his own contemplations.
“You do what your parents did and you try to do it a bit better,” were his words to me when I asked him for his best piece of parenting advice, and they are words I have absorbed to this day, acknowledging that sometimes my failings are simply a product of my own childhood and yet, also finding myself resolute to improve.
In a world that is always changing it is the moments that capture our imagination, seize our hearts, and take possession of our senses that help us to stand strong, to know ourselves; to know others, and to feel rooted in this life experience.
And so, it is within these moments that I linger a minute longer, that I ask myself whether I have sucked out every.possible.minute.detail so that I am not just fully embracing the present, but so that when, in times of sadness and struggle, I can always be transported to the joy.
That morning at the lock I could not have know the challenges to come; we never can, and yet in the shadow of the blackthorn blossom and to the background of chirping birds and rushing water, spring in her unfailing wisdom, reminded me to hold on tight: to see with clarity, hear with openness, and feel with love, so that I might continue to have all that I need here, inside.
Thank you for reading/listening.
With love,
Alice 🙏🏻
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