The day is dark and heavy with cloud, a rare thing for Colorado. Last year’s drought has left the grass with little nourishment, the ground desiccated, and the low sky promises much-needed moisture. I’ve opened the doors to let the breeze blow through but I keep having to get up to prevent the front door from slamming shut. Eventually I prop it open with a quilted pillow. Something light that still keeps it from closing.
I’ve wasted several precious tea bags today, accidentally letting the water cool and the brew turn bitter as I’ve slept on the couch, waiting out a plane-bourn virus that snatched me from the jaws of productivity this week. I should be grateful for the slowing down, the way I’ve mirrored our dog in these languid, healing hours, laying first on one surface, then the next, in one position, then another. I am restless with dislocation, though, waiting for rain.
Years before, in our season of desolation, we came across a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Enfolded in rhythm and mystery, it spoke something that we needed, gave shape and weight to the nebulous and nagging sense of irritation we felt when someone came to us with simple answers, platitudes, Scriptures tacked on to pictures of soaring eagles. Between illness and job-loss, we’d been stripped of the simple, and when people came, holding it as a gift, not realizing it was instead a shield between them and our pain, we didn’t know what to do with our anger.
Read the rest of this guest post for the incredible Elora Nicole on radical self-care and waiting for rain.