Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 3 Comments

Retreat

Sometimes Grace sweeps in unexpectedly. Sends an invitation via express mail and there’s no time to even RSVP. You just have to ready for the event and head toward the occasion. That’s how it was this week.

A special remote location had been calling me for weeks. Or perhaps, I’d been calling to it. Longing for the essence of what I feel every time I am immersed in its folds. Body calm, mind clear, heart open. Steeped in its natural surroundings, I am home to myself when I am there. Humbled in the presence of the natural world, bowing to the energy that sources all things.

No phone, no computer, not even paper or pen to scratch down ideas and concepts. Just sun and stars, gathering wood, carrying water and the sound of birdsong in a stilled forest of guavas.

I got to share these sacred spaces with three very important men in my life (okay, Jeb’s still a boy, but a man-in-training, to be sure). There was my eight-year old son, Jeb, his father, Rex, (expert guide and the man I didn’t marry), and the Bohemian (specialist in traveling light and the man I soon will wed). We all orbited each other in a flowing dance of riverside wanderings and fireside chats, punctuating our days with sunrise and sunset.

Like any sacred journey or vision quest, there is an arc of experience in getting to this distant locale. There is the preparation, readying of myself to go. There is the first step in a long walk to get there.  And there is the passage, itself, in which time anything I do not need to carry simply falls away with every bead of sweat, each exhale.

Once I arrive, I am there to live and breathe all that this place has to offer me. Each visit different, as I am different every time I’m there. Insights filter through sunlight on the ginger flowers. Lessons are learned through a mist passing over the bluff. There is a remembering in the warmth of a big, flat boulder in the river and I can lay my body down and soak in everything I already know.

That’s right, I’m home.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

And then…it’s time to go.

When it’s time to part from this place, no shower is hot enough, no bed cozy enough to tempt me into leaving. I want to feel this way forever. How can I keep it with me?

I want to take everything I sense inside each cell within my body and put it in a bottle. Carry that bottle inside my heart. Uncork its contents to seep through every pore so I can breathe the fragrance of Love no matter where I am.

Store it for use when I’m standing in line at the grocery store, when suddenly the scent of wild lilikoi blossoms, yellow ginger flowers and the loam of wet, mossy stones would leak from my smile. The impatient shoppers in line, the electronic beep of the bar code scanner, would all take on the soft hue of perfection – I would still be home. And hopefully, my serenity would spread. A gorgeous contagion that would ignite the hearts of everyone in the frozen food aisle.

Or something like that.

But in this arc-of-a-journey, there is always an end. One last look back at my divine place, then the walking away. For the first mile of my departure, I am so happy, it feels as though every blade of grass that brushes me is blessing me in love. Two miles away and I begin to feel the changes. I am ever-closer to cars, street signs and the smell of laundry detergent on fellow hikers moving towards me.

I pick a lilikoi flower along the path and sniff it every time I sense my bliss fading like particles of dust behind me. Don’t forget, don’t forget.

But by the time I set foot off the trail and into the parking lot packed with rental cars and swarming with visitors in bright colors with cell phones, I know I am sliding down the slope of the that arc. I am on the other side.

What’s left are wisps of feeling. So deep, yet fleeting, and I opt for few words, as silence seems the only place where this sweetness will still linger. If I articulate, the essence scatters.

36 hours later and I am left with memories and a few photos. These words, here, that attempt to describe something I do not really understand. But I don’t want to understand magic. I just want to live it.

Remember that I’ve got (we’ve all got) a crystalline bottle of sacred light inside our hearts just ready to uncork. There is a longing that I have to seep the beauty of what I know is real and true into every action I take in this wild, messy world. How I want to smell the fragrance of Grace through all my days, no matter my locale. Beam it out. Share it. Remember that there’s an open invitation. Never have to part.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Dwelling with The Mothers of the World

Over the weekend was a pivotal parental let-go.

I guided eight and a half-year old Jeb through a solo sojourn. His first real walk alone. A milestone, not unlike that pinnacle moment years ago, when he released my finger and began a precarious and tubby toddle away from me.

“Yeah, just walk with me to that mango tree and then you can turn around,” he suggests.

He’s got his back pack on and our rubber slippers are flip-flopping, ankle-deep in grass, along our country road. Jeb’s going to his dad’s house which is about a third of a mile away from where we live. It’s his first unaccompanied trek.

“Ok, this is good,” he says as we approach the big tree. It’s a hug and a kiss and a modern, motherly reminder from me to “text me when you get there, ok?”

As the words come from my mouth, I recognize that parental predecessors have never had this technological assurance. But this back up doesn’t make the space between farewell and my cell phone display screen any less tenuous.

“Ok, love you…” he says as he waves and walks on, beaming in this moment of flight and freedom.

We move in opposite directions, then catch each other both looking back over our shoulders at one another. More waves are exchanged, then we move further on. Another backward glance and we’re both smiling to see each other peeking back again.

This goes on, repeatedly, as we make our way in opposite directions.

A few steps further away, look back, smile, wave. A few more steps away.

Finally, there is a curve in the road that we both know will permanently put us out of sight of one another. He is distant but I can hear him.

“Ok, mom, bye!”

And just like that, a shared, final gesture of parting and he rounds out and away from my view.

I know Jeb’s Dad is waiting to receive him on the other side. He, too, has been given the request to text me as soon as Jeb makes it there (no cell reception at his house, only text messages can come through). It’s not that I’m worried, just wanting confirmation.

So two hours later and three of my sent messages (something along the lines of “please help a mother rest assured that our boy made it alright”) I’ve settled into the deepest let go. The one countless mothers have done long before cell phones. Trusting that no news is good news. Rationalizing that if Jeb wouldn’t have made it, his father would have contacted me by now, wondering where he was. That they must be having so much fun, they just forgot.

Not extremely anxious, just not completely settled, I get to sit in the company of the Mothers of the World. Surrender to the space of no guarantees. Dwell within the uncertainty that links us across the ages.

No matter how many technological tools offer instant answers, there will never be a definitive promise. A mother will always be required to release her child back into the world.

And in the case of this mother (as in, me), she didn’t get that little reassurance until sunset, when her cell phone sounded and the words, “I’m ok” came across her screen.

Mother’s intuition knew this all along. She just got to let go and rely on it.

photo courtesy of llamnunds
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

A New Current

Not touching the iTouch, Jeb dives into Legos. While I work, he sits beside me creating countless structures in the third dimension. Interactions and melodramas can be heard as he mumbles dialogue between Lego guys.

Not immune to the ways of war, these little dudes usually come with some sort of miniature weaponry.

Knowing my pacifist tendencies, Jeb points out, “Hey, Mom, look at this.”

A Lego version of a trash can has been filled with a slew of black rifle replicas, each one smaller than a toothpick.

“Mmmm…that’s a good place for them,” I respond.

For now, I won’t begin an essay asking why standard toys include gun-toting characters for our children’s play. For now, I am focusing on the positive. And that is the fact that there was no mention of the iTunes store or any kind of upgrade requests for an entire day.

For 24 hours my son was plugged into his own imagination, no purchase necessary.

No yaps about an App from my eight year old (and gasp!) no yips from the dog next door all night!

For the first time in many nights, the neighborhood was softly quiet.

Yes, I did make a communication (refer to previous post, if you like). And yes, at least for one night, that skipping record stopped.

A dear friend used to say to me that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

If the record player is my metaphor, then I’ll say I simply pulled the plug on both my son’s handheld gadget and the neighboring dog scenario. Things feel a little more sane, and certainly more quiet.

Even dreamtime shifted. I swam in milky mineral pools of hot spring water in the caves and crevices of some remote beach. Collected multitudes of ornate blue and white pottery shards, which lead like bread crumbs, to entire plates and vases, fully enact and washed up on the shore.

I’ll collect these lessons like treasure. Soak in the silence. Smile and drift a bit on this new current.

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved