The world is opening up.  I got my teeth cleaned yesterday and I’ll get a haircut today.   Yes, we’re still wearing masks but there’s a little more space in these longer days.

I asked my dental hygienist how his children were doing with the pandemic.  He said his seven year old daughter had been doing well and then a few months ago became hysterical and they couldn’t calm her down.  She kept saying, “The hospitals are full.”  They took her to a behavioral psychotherapist who through talking and having the child draw discovered that the child remembered when she was four years old and had respiratory failure and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.  Now, she feared it would happen again and the hospitals would be full and she would die.   The therapist assured her she is older now and stronger and will be okay.

I think it’s good the memory of her trauma was uncovered, discussed and aired. I think of the healing in putting it on paper. In chemotherapy, I drew an image of my body, and the therapist analyzing it, pointed out what she saw and what I might not be seeing and feeling in my experience. I can’t remember what I drew, but I do remember how her analysis hit home. I walked out feeling “seen”, and of course, it was really me seeing myself.

I sit with how our children have been and are being affected by all of this. Yesterday, my hygienist put it in perspective. He said that though this may be hard on our children, it’s not like life in Syria.  Yes, it’s true.  And I wonder what they say.

I’m with words of Jane Hirshfield: “One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read — in such a moment, anything can happen.”

Yes!

I’m with the fullness of the moment, the fullness of the breath as I assimilate and reflect. My passage expands like the twittering and flight of birds, a reverence ringing inside and out. I am the bell, the space, the lamp, the light, the chime.

Harvest and meaning gong!!