detachment.
The road was winding down out of the pine thick green forest, into the lighter juniper brush and finally hitting the land covered with our Desert Guardian, The Saguaros. The sky was so blue, electric-bright and the sun seemed to be relentless. The temperature said 115 and for the third time in 2 months, my air conditioning in my beloved Outback just went out. I began to have a panic attack. A real one. My heart jumped to my throat. Its pounding raced like there was a finish line for it somewhere. My palms sweat like a faucet. My breathing was shallow. All I could do was make a strange humming noise and flutter my hands by my face. My husband glanced at me while he drove, and I think that at that moment he realized how insane I was. I started to whimper.
“I know, wifey, it’s hot. We’ll be home soon.”
No. Not hot. Not that at all.
WHAT IF THE HOUSE DOESN’T SELL? I think I screamed it.
Here my deepest, darkest, scariest fear lives and it lives with me every moment. The possibility that it just. wouldn’t. sell. In time. In time for what? I guess in time for me to get up to Washington before this baby came swirling out of me. In time to find someone, like a midwife, to guide us with this birth. In time to find a place to live other than a pop-up. In time to take a leisurely vacation up the coast with my little family. In some kind of time.
“I’ve been scared of that, too, wifey,” says He. “But while you all slept last night and I sat outside the tent and watched the stars shoot and got to hear nothing, absolutely nothing for the first time in a long time, I realized I had to detach myself from it all, especially any time frame. The house will sell. But we need let go of the desperation that it must sell now. I hope it will, I think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’ll deal with it. I think in the detachment we’ll find some freedom. It’ll help us de-stress a bit.”
Okay Mr. Zen-y-pants. Fine. Don’t you just know it all? But I want to get the FUCK outta here NOW. NOW!! I cannot have another child here. FUUUUCK.
“I can’t have this kid here.”
“I know you don’t want to, but if we have to, we have to. But I am sure we won’t have to.”
“No, if we have to I will have this baby along side the Scenic Highway they call The 1.” I quickly remember a mystic I went to see back in 2000. Her name was Maya and her cards told me that I would have a baby on the road someday. (This thought quickly brings me to the fact that we probably should invest a bit bigger vehicle.)
He starts to talk again about how all our stress is because we are putting this strict timeline on ourselves. That we just need to let it all be and let this action, this shift happen on its own because we have done the work for it. I plug my ears and hum some more. He sighs.
This I don’t want to hear. This means I have to let go of myself, my desires, my needs. My expectations of my future. This means I have to just take what comes to me, prepared to allow its own happening, like a river, around the rocks, knowing I am going somewhere, emptying myself out in more water, but the path is not written, or rigid. It just is and I flow with it. Shit. All this work; ripping up floors and tearing up warped butcher block, and installing stone and making wholes in the ceiling for fancy lights and painting walls and living with nothing except empty space; this vision board I carefully crafted with times and dates and numbers and photos of rocky coastline and kids playing with chickens; the talks with the realtor in Washington; the dreams of being all cozy and pregnant in warm wool wraps, for the first time not carrying to term in triple degree temperatures, instead birthing with a light snow falling, a fireplace lit, a foggy, marine layer, a winter morning when my child comes to me. Wool socks on. Frost on a window. Broth on the stove.
All this, all this wanting, longing, and still i must become detached.
The wise let go of the self and being free of attachment they depend not on knowledge. Nor do they dispute opinions or fix upon any view. For those who have no wishes for either extreme of becoming, here or in another existence, there is no conflict….
From Sutta-Nipata, teachings of the Buddha.
