Today is a turning point. Not that every day doesn’t offer turning points, but today there are celandines shining through the ivy leaves alongside the footpath – not many, but they do shine, and they weren’t there yesterday. And today is the first day I have left the conservatory door open on a sunny morning, as it was warmer in there than in the house rather than colder.
And for that, for the turning point, I’m posting again, before the gap since the last post starts to make the next one feel too … unnecessary.
I’m almost out of the door, but before celandines and sunshine I was getting close to stepping back in and closing it. Opening it a couple of weeks ago might have been the end of it but – well, look at the view, right? The lovely voice coach and I agreed a fairly flexible target for getting that blog out. I beat it. And having started, carrying on did feel do-able, like something I want to do. Like something that had been waiting for me to do and was now quite relieved that I’d opened the door. It was a bit like being asked out to play, as though there’s fun to be had, and I was being invited to have it. And I almost lost the invitation. Almost left it just that bit too long. But this morning there were celandines, and sunshine. Kicking the door back open.
Yes, I know. These aren't celandines.
And this wasn't this morning.
But I didn't have the camera this morning
First, though, there’s another piece that nearly found its way into the last entry, but it didn’t seem to want to fit.
I was invited to sit at the head of a long table at which were all the people I had ever met, at a feast I had organised, laid on, invited them to. What did I want to say to them? I tell myself that I'm not, in honesty, much good at visualisations, and not much came to mind as sayable. But there was this …
I have two things to say to the hundreds of people who have shared my life from the beginning. Thank you. And I’m sorry.
Which on reflection grew into this.
Thank you for all that each of you have given me, that has helped make me who I am; and I’m sorry I’m so bad at keeping in touch. Not that it would be appropriate or possible to have kept in touch with all of you, but some, many, I could have. I could have been a more diligent letter-writer – I could have written at all. Same goes, in latter days, for email – though it isn’t the same. I have a Jane Austen in me that would spend a portion of each day at a table with pen and paper writing letters, but this isn’t the eighteenth century. I could have been a more insistent user of the phone. I mind that I haven’t been. If regrets had any point to them, this would be one of mine. I am sad, though, and sorry. This is a kind of a start, for starting somewhere might be better than not having started at all.
Inviting you in – or out, given the running metaphor – to join in with the personal game of daring to be that I’m being invited to may not be much of a balancer for years of failing to be in touch, but maybe also it’s better than yet more silence. I’m here to be heard, and also here to hear you. Something is inviting me out. If my out feels like something you want too, then come. Maybe there’s dialogue, maybe we explore together, maybe we simply explore at the same time.
I have no idea what this means. I’m stepping into the unknown, into that view beyond the door of warmth, sunshine, distance, meadows, fields, woods, shadows. Knowing only that it’s time to venture. Not knowing what, or who, I will meet in speaking my truth. Seeking my truth. Hoping for encounter, re-encounter.
My thanks to celandines and sunshine for reminding me of the invitation. It’s clouded over again now, but that will change.