Wild Abandon

I know I’ve mentioned more than once the term “wild abandon” when describing various aspects of my life, and although I believe at one time it referred to my crazy college days or my distant travels, it now more commonly describes the way I clean or attend to my grocery shopping.  In my now-forty, three small kids, worry lines point of view, have I lost the art of living?

THIS is wild abandon:

Young Lady sprints across the stone wall and throws herself wildly into the air – every muscle engaged, her sight set only on the sky, her belief that there is no limit as to how far she can fly.  Every time we went to this beach in Bretagne, she would find this wall and sail forth.

My body is not as fluid as it once was. I look tired, walk bent over with creaking joints, and long most for the moments when I can slip into the cool sheets with my bare feet at the end of the day and wiggle my toes at the delicious feeling.  I’m intimidated by the energy and effort it will take to upkeep our new house and garden in my decrepit state.

But it’s not my physical bearing that’s the problem.  At merely forty, I feel old.  Past sorrows weigh me down like a set of weights: memories of lying with my face on the cold bathroom tiles as I try to come to grips with the fact that my brother just committed suicide; the deaths and cultural tensions we faced in East Africa that warred against our humanitarian efforts (meanwhile the attacks on the Twin Towers happening in the very town we left behind); the knowledge that nothing is ever permanent or promised, and the very beings I love the most in the world are gifts …. or perhaps loans, meant to be fully treasured and cared for.  This tires me out sometimes, the fact that nothing is permanent or promised in this life.

I might have been born too old to begin with, worrying about the lepers in India when I first heard such a thing existed at the tender age of six, crying at the thought that someone felt lonely and it didn’t even have to be someone I knew, worrying that the doctor who was treating my leg might have been tired out from performing the surgery (a concern groggily expressed at age 12 while still in reanimation).  My daughter is too old for her age too; she has a tender heart buried in her fierce determination, and worries that are not for her to bear.

So may Young Lady live out her wild abandon as long as possible.  Let me never hinder her flight or clip her spirit with careless words or the impatience that comes too easily.  May life nourish her as much as possible when young so that when sorrows come, her roots will be deep, her face will still see the sun and hope will not be far off.   Let her continue to sail forth through brilliant youth, wise adulthood, and even as the sun is setting on her rich life.

And let this wild child teach me how to soar once again.

* This post originally appeared in my former blog,Perfect Welcome, and may contain some discrepancies in names or comments.