Mourning's Morning

Good morning!  I missed a post yesterday, but I just couldn’t bring myself to share what was on my heart. I’m not sure I could have put it into words – I still can’t. I awoke with that sense of something momentous about to happen.  The phone call came about 1100 – it was one that I realized I’d been expecting since Friday morning. The moment, the content of the call, what I was asked to do, all were as I had half-intuited prior to the weekend’s beginning. I just can’t find the words to convey it. Serendipity seem to shallow a word.  Déjà vu is too cliché. Fate, destiny, and premonition are all inappropriate. This was just something I had known in my bones, so yesterday I was unable to put into words what I experienced. I’m still struggling to do it – I’m sure I will find a story at some point, but I’m still processing the symbolism and meaning myself. When I get it, I’ll let you know… J

I decided this morning to make use of my inability to stay asleep past 5:30… for those who know me well, I would love to be a morning person if it weren’t for the mornings.  LOL! However, this year, with a change of jobs and jobs responsibilities, I found myself eagerly getting up at 5:45 every morning. I couldn’t wait to get to school! Of course, I’m not always functioning atop speed in the mornings; I don’t think I’ll ever be that type of morning person, but at least I don’t dread the mornings now! Over the past couple of years, I’ve had sleep issues. First, my issue was that I would sleep 10-12 hours a night then wake up exhausted. By midday, I was actively fighting the urge to sleep. Literally, I would have to think, “Don’t fall asleep. You can’t fall asleep, you’re at work.” I’ve never had narcolepsy, but I would imagine this is pretty close to it although I can manage to stay awake. I went to my doctor, who checked my thyroid (thyroid problems run in my family), my blood counts, blood pressure, lipids, etc.  In other words, she checked everything you would in a physical. Then she ordered about 10 more tests to check my brain chemicals, like pituitary gland function, hypothalamus, etc. Nothing flagged any abnormal results. No problems. We thought together maybe it was my schedule: a mom working a full time job, coaching extra activities at school, working on my doctorate, and working two part-time jobs while still managing to keep house and keep family fed. So I reduced my activities, I got a new job, and I removed a major source of stress from my household.

Now I was sleep, but only in short periods. The short bouts of sleep have been going on for the past 8 months or so, and sometimes I can stay up for about 36 hours – not that I try to, but once or twice a month, it just happens. The important thing is that I’m resting better, and I can make it through most afternoons without telling myself to stay awake. Well, this morning, I decided I would make my coffee, grab my camera, and sit on the porch. It wasn’t quite light yet, so I tried snapping some pictures of my yard while the sun gradually rose. Some pictures were ok – the flash kept going off. Others were really blurry. It didn’t matter. I’ve let that Canon sit there for months, vowing to use it as often as possible. Still, it was cool outside, and I enjoyed my coffee. The white cat that lives outside brought a huge field mouse (rat?) up to the porch to show me. It was still alive… she proceeded to enact the proverbial “cat and mouse” pageant for me.  I could have done without that – I wanted her to kill the poor thing instead of toying with it, but I forced myself to watch the act. We tend to ascribe human feelings to this animal process, so I did everything I could to remove myself and watch the event from an objective point. It seemed to take hours for her to kill that poor rodent. When I looked at the clock, only a couple of minutes had passed. She let it go on the porch, and it ran toward my front door.  She had it cornered, but there was an illusion of freedom. She would come to me and meow without ever removing her attention fully from her prey. After a few seconds, she would go back and put her paw or mouth on the mouse, reminding it of its predicament. The breeze lifted a little, and she clamped her jaws around the back of its neck, lifting it like she would have lifted a kitten. She took it to the front yard, and spent about 15 seconds letting it burrow in the grass, pouncing or putting her paws on it while it attempted to escape. Finally, she brought it back to the porch and dropped it; I watched as blood spilled from a gash in its side, and it frantically moved in circles to try and get away from the cat. Only one side of its body worked at this point. The cat meowed at me.  “Put it out of its misery!” I told her. The wind sifted the leaves on the trees again, caressed my face and ran its thin fingers through my hair. For such a hot morning, the current feel surprisingly cool, a promise of fall and winter to come. The cat regarded me for a mere second, as if to say, “You humans. You just don’t get it.” If the cat could have posted to Facebook, her comment would have been “SMDH.” She turned back to the mouse, firmly grasped it in her mouth, and carried it to the welcome mat, and crouched for a few seconds. No sounds, just the rustling leaves in the peach and locust trees. The cat looked up and out at the yard, her jaws open while she panted. I could see her teeth and tongue were crimson. So, it’s over, I thought. It was. She put her mouth once more on the prey and began to eat.

What in the world was I supposed to understand about that? Good grief! I’m tender-hearted enough to feel badly for a member of the rodent species that I would not willingly welcome crawling up my leg! I also wasn’t angry with the cat; annoyed was closer to what I felt, but I think I was more annoyed that I felt for the little animal’s suffering than for what the cat did to it. I reflected that I despise to see suffering around me. When my friends suffer, I immediately respond and try to help or fix things. Because I’ve suffered, I want to protect those I care about from having to experience suffering. Even when I see strangers in anguish, part of my inner being leaps forward and says, “Stop their suffering! How can you let them go through that when you know how it feels?” Hmmmm.  I had to stop myself at that point. How can I? What could I do stop the suffering? Usually, there isn’t much I can do to alter any situation for those who suffer. When I think to my own suffering, a lot of it was self-inflicted, not all, but a large part of it. What would I have done could I have “fixed” my suffering? Would I be the same person I am right now if I had NOT suffered? Keep in mind, I really like who I am at this point, so I have no good reason to go back and change anything about my life.

So, if I hadn’t suffered and gone through what I had, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Therefore, the suffering and pain I’ve experienced have taught me how to be… me. Hence the phoenix tattoo on my arm, reminding me that I’ve been transformed by the “fire” in my experiences. All the stupid decisions, all the losses of friends and lovers over which I had to true control, and all of the hurtful things I’ve ever heard said to me, those have all formed how I respond to my life and circumstances now. I looked at the white cat crunching solidly on her breakfast, and I may have realized that sometimes pain and fear are just a necessary part of life to endure, to help us become stronger and more mature. And sometimes we have to sit back and watch others suffer their own transformations. There is nothing we can do about what they go through except be available when they emerge, and give them the support they will need in their “new” state. We rise from the ashes transformed into our new and better self, if we can manage to not unpack and dwell in the suffering place. If we have the ability to somehow move through the pain, we will emerge stronger than before. The moving through the “pit,” the “shadow of death,” is crucial to not having a damaged life, and that is where archetypes and stories can help some of us.

I mentioned the breeze I felt while I observed the cat and mouse. It physically touched me, of course, but I noticed it first when I was upset that the cat wouldn’t immediately kill the mouse. In the Hispanic culture, the word for our inner creativity is “El Duende.” Literally, the word can mean elf, sprite, leprechaun, goblin, etc. The spirits to which the word refers are AIR spirits. So, El Duende began to work in me, and now I’ve shared its story –the revelation and the feeling both. Today, will you notice when El Duende rises up and blows through you? Will you notice when your inner “Puck” is ready to start playing? Look for those signs. If you don’t know what to do with the yet, don’t worry.  Just take notice of them for now, and notice when they happen. El Duende is related to one of the four major archetypes we have within us: The Child. Tomorrow, I will share more about the Child archetype, and I’ll share a story on my blog to help bring you get in touch with the Child that exists within you. Share a smile with others whom you encounter today. You never know if they need that smile, and it costs nothing to share it.