birth days
among the yarrow
“It’s a time of rebirth,” says the grandmother in the hill, standing beneath the green canopy pathway to her home. Her snap dragons are in full glorious bloom and the wild mullein she allows to grow of out the cracks in the flagstone reach their enormous leaves straight up.
The back of my Subaru is open, with my wild haired child buckling and unbuckling her brand new, bright blue helmet, standing on the seat, holding her stuffed animal in one hand, helmet in the other.
The drum is loaded up in the back of my car, wrapped in a few blankets and on its side, tucked behind the passenger seat and Amara’s car seat.
The grandmother looks at me, her white hair loose in the morning sun, pure love beaming out of her eyes. She wraps her arms around me and I breath in deep of the herbal oils she’s spread over her hair and face and hands. She’s happy to be returning my drum, on this week of my birth and she continues to be a root in the flowering exploration of my life as a woman on earth at this time. A constant cheering forward.
Tomorrow is my birthday. Big changes are, yet again, on the horizon.
One year ago I was in Peru, depressed and determined to see the ancient rescued condors for my birthday. Amara and I boarded the little colectivo to the animal shelter outside of Cusco. We stood outside the fence and watched the condors’ enormous presence, their prehistoric talons gripping the branches as they silently swayed back and forth, back and forth. I remember the sound of their flight, standing and savoring in the winds of their flapping wings.
Five years ago, I was planting painted mountain corn with our community: elders and children alike, dropping the colorful miracle seeds into the dark, prepared earth. It was a beautiful thing to see, all ages and shapes and sizes of folks planting together like that. We set out a long farm table in the barn for the stews and salads and baked goods people brought. I couldn’t stomach any of it, oddly enough, and a few days later realized I was pregnant with the seed of Amara.
The year before that the world was one fire, my life included, and I fled the desert for the mountains of my home land with a heron feather fan and a car packed with very few possessions.
And the year before that, I was planting a desert willow sapling down by Oak Creek with a little gathering of people I deeply loved, all over 60 for the most part. We sang and gave thanks and ate cake.
This year is different in so many ways… as it always is.
Today we will gather as women around the drum to sing and celebrate, and tomorrow, my true birthday, I will have the whole day blessedly to myself. No child, no plans, no people - just me and wherever the winds take me. The forest? The water? Nowhere but the bed? I would love to gather wild herbs or just lay in the hammock.
This life that calls to me is not a common one.
It is a life centered on the treasures found in quiet moments by the fire or in the wild, in whispered teachings to my daughter about leaves and flowers, roots and seeds and how to build a fire. It’s a life that confounds modernity and stretches my own capacity, but it has, without question, captured my heart. It has lassoed my heart with a rope made of beauty and with a strength I can’t resist.
I don’t know exactly how I will pull it all off, but for now I am (beyond) content to sit beneath the juniper forest and gather firewood, wild herbs and allow my thoughts to soar unhindered.
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“The river is everywhere.” - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
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