Somewhere Over the Rainbow

So it's almost been a month since I posted my last piece about the stay at home orders.  Today I sit here listening to the news as they report on protesters demanding to open up diners and hair salons. I hear people complaining that they haven't had their hair dyed or their nails done and it is the same as being in prison. It is so odd to me that the people protesting are not the people who work those jobs. And aren't those the same jobs that people always complain about when they want $15 an hour? Now all of a sudden they appear to be pretty damn important to people.

For us this month has pretty much been the same.  The only change was that our weekly trips to the market for fresh fruit and veg were completely cut out.  Today we ventured out and picked up apples and a huge flat of strawberries. It was so wonderful to have those things back in the house. We're set up for a few more weeks but I can tell you that we solid ran out of just about everything before heading out to the stores. I was amazed at the number of people not distancing themselves from each other. Not a lot of folks wearing masks either. We scurried in and out taking out produce and heading back home.

Last week I took a week off from work to get some things done around the house.  We managed to get several above ground beds in and planted lots of veg. We did some trimming on some of the trees around the house and got the yard ready for spring. 

  

 

Eli is still perfecting our zero waste.  He came up with a great recipe for crackers made from the oat milk he makes each day. They turned out amazing!

  

Overall, I'm pretty surprised at where we are right now. Life is very good for us. I feel a strange sense of calm and ease even though when I read the news it appears the world is falling apart. 

Last week my aunt Sandra passed away.  She was the aunt that every one always told me I was just like. She was pretty amazing.  Over the last 5 years, we had a bit of a falling out. In the end we made a mends for that but when we came back from New Mexico, she didn't want us to come over or help at all with her.  She was someone I always looked up to when I was a child. As an adult, I learned that a lot of times when you put people up so high, it is a really big fall.  She was diagnosed with cancer about a year before we left and was in Chemo until the end. One of my sisters was with her when she died. I hate that she had to suffer but they did tell me that she was on morphine at the end so there's that. 

This is an older picture of us.  The first is of me in El Cajon some 17 years ago. Just amazing.  The second photo is her around the same time frame.

I'm not as sad as I thought I might be, when I thought about her dying in the past. I would have thought that I would be bawling my eyes out. But, that just isn't what is happening now.  I'm actually glad.  I'm happy she's not hurting any more. Death isn't the end of life.  Today she is here in the same way she was two weeks ago.  A flower is a flower, but it is also the sun and the rain.  It is the soil around it.  The flower is the sum of all the parts around it and we cannot remove one of the parts.  Without the sun we could not have the flower. It is this inter-being I think that makes me feel that we need to stop concentrating on the suffering and instead, be here.  Be right here, right now in the present moment to fully learn that we have everything we need to be happy. 

Everything.

So I sit here today.  With my strawberries and my rainbow.  I sit here with my dogs.  I sit here with my husband and I am present. I am in this moment right now.  I breathe in - Calm    I breathe out - Ease.  Maybe that's the magic.  Finding our place, where we can just be.