Today, however, it is not November. Today, every window in the house is open. The living room is the warmest, brightest spot, a fact that is authenticated by the number of cats (three out of three) lying in puddles of sun on the worn carpet that holds dust from three homes. The cats aren't aware that this spring-like bliss is to be short-lived. Maybe it's better that way.
With every deep inhale, I smell the earthy mixture of wet soil, dying leaves, and cinnamon that permeates the air. The sky is a shade deeper than robin's egg blue, and reminds me of Easter. Jesus emerging from the tomb to a blissfully living world. But the green is gone from the trees, so the element of new life is lost on me, and I turn my gaze down to the ground once more where darkened leaves wait to be scooped up and packaged away.
Today feels very in-between.
In-between new life and slow death. In between beginning and end. In between fresh and tainted, white and gray. I feel in-between. Abandoned and found. Hopeless and driven. On the edge of the things that I'm meant to find, and behind the wall that keeps them from being found. So close, I can taste them. And yet not close enough to see clearly.
When I started school in August, I already felt the in-between. I was encouraged to embrace it, drink it in, allow it to fill me up. Now I'm overflowing. The sheer excess of in-between is what has made these last three weeks so difficult.
Today feels like the promise of something new and warm, despite the encroaching cold. Today is not laughter, but it is not tears, either. Today is still, and an invitation to be still in the in-between. And so I will be. I'm doing just fine.
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| @hannraye |
I often feel an excess of the in-between. Neither here nor there. Perpetually in the pregnant pause of life. Some of that comes from a devaluation of the now. As if the now is never good enough. If the now were good enough, where would the striving be? Where the growth? Where the overcoming? Where the bliss?
ReplyDeleteI may have a lack of appreciation for the ordinary, which is required for living in the now. My love of reading and storytelling in all formats has fed my (already predisposed) desire for the extraordinary life. Discovery! Adventure! Epic romance! Those aren't typically part of the everyday "now."
Maybe this is why I love to read. Perhaps it's easier for me to leave the in-between and enter the now when I'm actually "elsewhere!"