It started in the kitchen while I was on my annual week-long silent meditation retreat. I was doing my nightly work meditation of clearing the food tables and putting away the dinner leftovers. In the corner between the storage shelves and the stainless steel industrial sink, the pot washer and I got caught in a silent tango of “Go ahead”… “No, no, you go ahead…,” as he reached to put away a giant salad bowl at the same time I reached for a 5 gallon storage container for the remaining Miso soup. His eye caught mine and in an instant we tumbled right into the depths of each other.
This happens when you go days without talking and the extent of your activity is mindfully sitting, walking, eating, and sleeping. Ordinary things become extraordinary. They begin to hit you like a freight train. I’d cried on my way to dinner when I saw a wild turkey land on the concrete edge of the still water pool outside the meditation hall and bend its long neck down to take a drink.
A full body smile spread between the pot washer and me. We both quickly averted our eyes and went back to work. But it was too late, that brief moment launched me into a state of craving that has been kicking my ass ever since.
At first, my desire was to violate one of the Five Precepts every retreat participant agrees to—no sexual misconduct, not to mention the vows of my twenty year marriage, and take this man by the hand, lead him up the dirt path to a clearing in the woods, lay him down on the ground, and make love under the starry night without ever saying a word. (No problem honoring the precept of silence, or the precepts of no killing, stealing, or taking intoxicants for that matter). But that, of course, was out of the question, so my craving turned into another helping of veggie lasagna at lunch the next day, then wanting more time when the retreat came to an end, and then wanting to find a new spiritual teacher who would really see me for who I am. When I got home, it shifted to wanting a less cluttered house, a more passionate husband, a more respectful teenage daughter, a new wardrobe, and an extravagant, spectacular 40th birthday surprise. The latter of which led me to cry, throw a temper tantrum, get completely bummed out and disappointed about my birthday a week before it even happened, and then to schedule a test drive at the Ferrari dealership.
The craving now is just a deep ache in my chest and belly. A hollow longing that is just looking for something—anything to distract me from the reality that all things come to an end.
I know this. Foreclosure taught me this. In fact, I see life as one big constant state of foreclosure—which means having the structures that I house myself in come to an end and force me out into the street of knowing who I am, and who I can be, without them.
Days before I went on retreat my oldest daughter moved 3,000 miles away to start college. It’s the end of motherhood, as I have known it. Well, perhaps not quite. My youngest daughter just started high school and reminds me every day with her random bouts of snootiness and boundary pushing that my days of mothering are nowhere near over, but it is the end of having my oldest daughter at the center of my life on a day-to-day basis, a place she has occupied since I was 21. The reality of her absence was there when I left for retreat, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when I came home. It wasn’t so much adjusting to the small things like taking three plates out for dinner instead of four, or no longer checking my phone for her texts telling me when she’s on her way home. It’s the way my body knows she isn’t here, and yet reaches for her anyway. I often find myself lying on her bed. She isn’t in her room with the door shut holding her necessary but invisible part of the family dynamic, but I wander in and look for her anyway. My cells search for her at night when I am in my own bed. They grasp across the miles and ache when they can’t find her. I stay awake to the fact that I can no longer fall asleep knowing she is safe in her bed, or the fact that she will never be home in the same way again, and neither will I.
Her living at home isn’t the only thing coming to an end. Last week I had my last session of a writing class I have been a part of for almost three years. In a few weeks the women’s meditation group I’ve been attending for four and a half years is going on indefinite hiatus, and I am packing up my desk at the shared workspace I joined last year because I can no longer afford the rent. Not to mention…oh wait, maybe I did mention…that I just turned 40 and statistically speaking, the first half of my life is now over.
This morning, while sitting on the toilet, I had a thought filled grasping attack, thinking, “You need to exercise more and find a new meditation group…” “Why didn’t you cancel Comcast instead of your workspace?” “You need to send another college care package…she’s not eating enough…” But as my mind was spinning, I noticed that my body was calm. My chest felt open and at ease. There was a new kind of vibrancy, a ready and waiting energy. This happened when my mom died two years ago. Amidst the grief, all the energy I had invested in being my mother’s daughter, the daughter of a chronically ill mother, came back to me. It was a surprise. I got back parts of myself that I didn’t even know were missing.
Perhaps this time of endings is the same. Perhaps my craving is just a way to call back and welcome home my missing parts—the places of aliveness that I’ve quieted or planted in other people’s gardens. Perhaps grasping and letting go are one motion, one that opens the ground for something fresh to arise. Maybe it’s time to move from being a student back to being a teacher. Maybe making one less lunch will give me one more poem, and a more spacious house will give me and my best friend more room to remember our passion.
Perhaps there is nothing to grab on to except my own hand as I lead my own body up the dirt path to a clearing in the woods, because the love I really want to make under the starry sky is with the sweet web of sorrow and fear that impermanence brings. I know its release is the freedom and expansion I truly seek.