whirligig of time

Wow. The wind is howling today. Not exactly the type of day to wear a skirt… so I didn’t.

It’s funny that this is the atmosphere outside when I was trying to conjure an image for my present life and what came to mind was my favorite November afterschool activity in high school. I would get home and before the daylight slipped away and I burrowed in my study hole for hours of homework in the basement, I would take my beloved husky, Wolfie, for walks across our neighbors’ fields. They owned an entire lake between those fields and… by that point they were living six months of the year in Florida. So it was Wolfie’s and my lake (because of course we were supposed to be surveying the land to make sure nothing was awry). She liked to go over the hill and chase away the geese with her Nordic running instinct. I would follow her and then land myself at the benches on the beach. I’d look beyond the waterski ramp into the silvery glass of water and collect the calm. But then there were days when the water was blue and choppy, with the silver bobbing up and down in triangular chunks. My hair would whip around my face. My lungs would feel the burn of the run and the cold… and I felt the calm within myself as the dried leaves whirled around at my feet.

I feel like that 16 year old girl right now. Well… not the one stressing out about pre-calc… or mooning over a certain purple sweater obsessed ‘Mickey Mouse.’ But the girl sitting still as the elements whipped around… feeling connected, calm, and okay with all that.

And man, when life likes to whip around… it certainly does that. Everything from my car to where I sleep to notions of saving the world to the intangible wonders of life and death and heady emotion… it’s all just whirling, whirling, whirling. But I just shut my eyes like I did on the bank of Carroll’s Pond and feel the brisk cold against my cheek, the howl in my ear, and know that somewhere lurking around the corner is my running dog about to come back from her goose chase and tell me it’s time to go home.