Reflections on moving to a new place
This week I am sharing an essay I wrote based on a writing prompt given by my friend Carol Adler in her community writing session. She’s an amazing facilitator of the creative process, and a beautiful writer. I’m grateful for the experience to create and share amongst a community of heartfelt women.
The prompt “blue bird” was part of a word association exercise. As many of you know, I am leaving Los Angeles and moving to Lake Arrowhead, California. When I went to see the house we ended up buying, I saw a big blue bird (well, actually a bluejay but he is after all a bird that is blue) hopping around at the base of a tree in the surrounding forest. He caught my eye – I love to watch wild creatures living their day-to-day when they don’t know they are being observed.
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest, will you show me the way?
I don’t know this forest. It’s new and you’re a good friend for me, I can tell. Before I met you, I was a city girl. But before that, I was a mountain dweller, like you. Today I return to hear your song. Will you mentor me on how to be a mountain girl again? I might have forgotten a few things, like how to get snow off the car window when it’s crusty and frozen. Like how to keep my socks dry when the snow is two feet high. Like how to put layers on my little one – snow boots, mittens with a string through the jacket so they don’t get lost. Those little clips to keep them put on the pink ribbed cuff covered in frozen streaks of snot.
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest, will you tell me I’m okay? That I made the right call? The one that honors the inner knowing. The one that reminds me to pray to the center of my being for light and truth. That call. That voice. It’s mine and mine alone and she’s a bit shy right now. She heard the voices of others telling her, I’m so excited for you, and she wondered why she wasn’t. She’s scared. She’s little. She lost her mittens a long time ago.
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest, will you comfort me as my mother once did not? Will you become my protection and my strength, as all wild things have become to that little girl who lost her mittens on a different forest floor? An old one. When she lost her mittens, she was scolded. Not scolded, hurt. Punished. I don’t have the money to keep buying you things! Get your shit together!
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest, will you remind me when it’s time to go? When it’s time to find a new place again? Or visit the old? Will you walk me to the edge of this one and sing a little goodbye song so I can carry on?
Blue bird on a forest floor in a new forest . . .
Such a lovely slice of Nature calling musings on our present circumstance.