sacred errands

Join me for some sacred errands. A 5-6 minute read if you have the time and desire.

I’ve felt an uncomfortable level of overwhelm and too muchness for weeks.

Today instead of trying harder, instead of demanding more efficiency from myself, I’m trying out what it’s like to slow down and let things exist without pushing myself to accomplish anything, let alone everything. Maybe this is a way I can get back to myself.

Slow morning after very little sleep. It’s okay, expect less of yourself. Coffee and cat snuggles slowly recharging my battery. My cat reaches up to place her soft paw on my neck. It’s like she’s feeling for my pulse. Deep breaths, slow down the heart rate, there is time for this just being still.

Take in one thoughtful article talking about secure attachment to reality and to spirit. Allow the idea that we can fall apart once we register a certain level of safety. We can lean in to our true insecurities once we have a certain amount of security. We can acknowledge the deepest levels of feeling unsafe once we experience real safety.

I want to go back and apologize to everyone I’ve ever known now that I know this. I know I don’t have to apologize for anything, but I feel the deepest version of “I’m so sorry, I love you, please forgive me and thank you.”

I got up to let the cats outside, but they don’t go. The gardeners are blowing leaves and the sound is very scary. I understand. I decide to go do errands. Get a bagel sandwich, wash my car, get a pedicure, and buy food both for myself and the cats. These errands, as well as doing my laundry, make me feel like a good, successful person who has her shit together. And I resolve to do these things slowly, with grace, moving at a pace I can still relax and restore at.

I walk as if I am on a sacred walk for peace from my car to the Bagel Street Cafe. I smile and notice the beauty of each person I come across. An older man takes his time before deciding to order one $3 chocolate chip cookie. His look of delight touches my heart. I deeply appreciate the man who makes my bagel sandwich. He knows my order, but listens intently as I speak the words, “Plain bagel toasted with turkey, cheddar, mayo, lettuce, and tomato.”

This breakfast grounds and comforts me. I am a person who often orders the same things. I am calmed by consistency and structure. I eat my bagel sandwich at an outside table.

I see two older women who might be sisters, maybe even twins. They are both weathered looking. One pushes the other in a wheelchair to a truck idling at the curb. I want to comment on how much alike they look. Family members looking like each other fascinate me.

I stare a little too long. I hear the standing sister say, “Everybody’s so fucking nosy here.” Shame floods my body. I had not meant to offend her. I look away and make sure not to look back again.

I hear them struggling to get the seated sister into the car. I hear the standing sister say, “I don’t know how to fucking do this.” Her voice is raspy, like a smoker’s. I can smell the smoke of her being. I register her overwhelm, her grief. I understand viscerally being at a car with a loved one in a wheelchair and not knowing the best, safest way to help them transfer into the car.

I am flooded with compassion. I want to help, but I stay in my lane, on my mat, in my ceremony. She is deep in hers and has not invited me in. She struggles to collapse the wheelchair and struggles again to get it into the truck. My heart is pulsing with love for her. I want to hold her hand, to hug her and say everything is going to be okay. You are doing such a good job. You are such a loving sister.

I want someone to tell me those things as well. It’s so invisible to so many how many of us are at the edge of our prayer in so many moments and yet we carry on figuring it out, learning new things about impossible tasks. Picking up the reins of another’s life when we are called. The way we learn how to do this is by doing it. Like keeping the fire, you open yourself to feel into what needs support, release, witness, and attend to the present moment with everything you have.

I notice that other drivers in their cars are exasperated by this truck loading its passengers and wheelchair. It’s in their way, blocking an already busy intersection. A woman with a shopping cart shakes her head with disgust that the truck has blocked the sidewalk ramp. She didn’t see how it was necessary to align the car door with the sidewalk ramp and the wheelchair. She didn’t know this team was doing its best to become experts of a new way of being in the world. She didn’t know the why of what was happening.

So often we don’t know the why, we don’t see the lead up or the aftermath, we are unaware and uncurious about what others are holding and going through, about where they’ve been, what was hard about it, how they came to be who they are.

My heart is full and heavy with all I’m observing around me. No wonder it’s sometimes hard for me to leave the house. I remind myself to focus on the meal I’m eating. The chew, enjoy, allow myself to be nourished, to find myself in my own actions and movements and restore the peace in my heart.

I make my way to the car wash. I decide ahead of time to be so kind as I decline the upsell they offer me every time. I prepare myself by practicing putting my car in neutral as I drive through the wash part. Every time I have so much anxiety about this part. Every time it feels like I’ve never driven a car before and the car wash employees look at me like, “How does this woman function in the world? Why doesn’t she understand how to put her car in neutral?”

I have no explanation other than my brain floods with something that does not help me cope and I become flustered beyond my usual abilities. Things I know how to do disappear and I don’t know what it is that I might be able to do. Unexplainable, yet I somehow navigate it every time and move on.

I decide to go to the nail salon I haven’t been to in ages where they are very slow, but gentle and sweet. They remember me and are happy to see me. The husband cuts my nails and cuticles, and uses the Dremel tool to remove my dead skin. The wife paints my toes. Then the husband gives my feet and legs a massage. I’ve always liked how they do the massage part as my toes dry. It’s so efficient.

The massage part seems generous. I imagine being in a moment of time that stands still except for my feet and calves being massaged endlessly. Massage is a portal where I experience my body in the world in a way that feels good and helps me understand what a body is. It’s always very informative. I can feel the kind of care that I long for. This person is caring for me. It registers and brings tears. I am being cared for. This is what it feels like. These are moments to relax, receive, take in the care.

Again I’ve slowed down into this moment and my reserves are building back up. Restorative. Happy. My feet feel sacred and cared for. Thank you.

On my way to buy cat food I listen to a podcast conversation about the film Come See Me in the Good Light. I want to watch it again. I want to listen to Andrea Gibson’s poetry again. I feel so grateful for people who instruct us on how to be alive as they die and on how to be with them as they die and how to be with death and all the life that happens after death. I wonder for the millionth time why I feel that I won’t fight death when it comes but relax into it like an old friend.

The owner at the pet food store always asks about my cats. She really wants to know what flavor combo of raw food they are most into this week. One chicken, one beef each meal. It changes all the time.
“Those guys!” She says. “I know, I just work here.” I say, meaning the cats are the boss of me. I always appreciate our rapport.

Heading home I decide I cannot face the grocery store. I don’t see a way it could be a restorative experience. I will go later when it isn’t Friday afternoon. Clean pretty feet, a clean car, cat food and going home to do my laundry, my life feels possible. I can do this. Errands have helped me feel like my life is something I can be good at. I feel capable of all the things I know how to do and even the possibility of learning some new things. I don’t take this for granted. It’s a delicate balance.

I sit in my backyard at home noticing that the fallen cherry blossom petals are the same shade of pink I picked for my toes. The cats eat grass and chase bugs. I hear a symphony of bees in my tree. Endless birds sing in a way that makes me happy to receive their collective sound healing. Bees. Birds. Happy.

I don’t know if I’m sweating from the sunshine or a hot flash or both but it feels good to feel the moisture coming out of my pores. I finish my glass of water because hydration is life. I’m grateful that I prefer water over hundreds of drink options.

Maybe the sunshine and water will help me grow taller like it does my plants. I doubt it, but I’m still hoping for a growth spurt. I never had one, always slow and steady in the growth, height, growing up department.

I’ve had enough reflection for today. My friend cancels our plans for tomorrow and I feel relieved to have more restorative time to myself. It’s no reflection of my love for her, just works out well for both of us to be alone and rest.

The beauty of this day aches a bit. I release myself from any ideas I might start to have about making the most of any given beautiful day. I think making the most of a moment in time for me is being present for it. Feeling all there is to feel about this moment.

Taking in the intimacy and details, the massive co-creative effort of all of life and death that never stops flowing. Wow it easy for me to zoom way out and then zoom back in and just be in my body. Just be a body at rest. Be alive and restore the parts of me that get depleted by life.

Thanks for doing my errands with me and witnessing my life from the inside with me.

Happy Friday.