It’s Friday, and I’m meeting up with the community of Five Minute Friday at Lisa-Jo Baker’s Tales from a Gypsy Mama for some free writing. Here are the rules: follow the prompt, no extreme editing, write for five minutes flat and encourage the person who linked up just before you. Might you consider joining?
(I was honored to be chosen as Lisa Jo’s featured Five Minute Friday for last week’s post on the “Welcome.” Thanks so much, Lisa-Jo.)
Anyhoo, today’s word is a doozy…RACE.
{GO}
I wake up before my alarm and my mind is doing the race about the conversation I had with her, the one I didn’t have with her. And what does she think about me? I’m filling in the gaps with bad stories because this is what I do.
Why do I do this?
I hop from my bed to write the email. Race down Prescott for Thursday morning with girlfriends, talk over coffee. We pray, and I feel my heart under shirt.
I hurry home to take littlest to preschool, and we are walking now, and I feel her hand in mine and see perfect maple leaves tipped fire on concrete.
For a moment, I slow. The air is cold.
I come home for standing up breakfast and a phone conversation.
I say good-bye just as I hop into the shower, dropping the phone next to the sink and letting water drip down my back.
But I hardly have time. Only a few minutes for my shower, and so the conversation doesn’t soak in until later. After the teeth cleaning by the hygienist and the tip-it-y-tip-it-y-typing away on keys.
Then I remember what we’d said about my body needing to heal, about decreasing stress, about a different kind of attention.
My mama and I talk about how some people set alarms on cheap plastic watches to remind them to breathe, slow down, drop their shoulders, but we recognize this would send my mind to the crazy races even more.
When’s it going to go off?
Why won’t this thing stop beeping at me?
So, instead, I’m thinking maybe I can take those moments when I want to check email, when I feel the need to stuff my face with the marshmallow crammed chocolate chips, when I clean something fast just to feel a moment of calm — maybe during those times I’ll breathe instead. Receive the in and out.
Let racing subside under a wash of still.
{STOP}
Connecting through the power of stories written, spoken and lived
So many days feel like this, don’t they.. especially the heart pounding “I feel my heart under shirt”. You’ve captured it perfectly!
Thank you, Smidge. Here’s hoping for less days to feel like this!…for you and me both. :-)
That was wonderful writing. I felt the same tension you describe, and then the same calm at the end.
Thank you for joining, David. I truly appreciate you visiting and commenting! Hope to see you again sometime.
I love everything about this. A poetry whirlwind. I’m now at rest but will race again.
A poetry whirlwind — I love that! Thanks, Alli.
I remember those days so well. Retirement is the only thing that has healed it for me. Living one minute at a time helped me at times like that too. I love you, my awesome girl!
I love you, Auntie. Well, with retirement still a few years off, I guess I need to practice more of that living one minute at a time thing. :-) Wise advice.
I am amazed at how many women crave the quiet, the calm, the end to racing. Oh what we could enjoy and would enjoy in that other pace of life. There is a collective hunger in the bloggy world of women wanting peace. You describe it so well my heart was racing with you friend. I love this.
Elizabeth, you and I seem to be walking through some similar places these last days. And you’re right — so many others, too. I’m grateful for kinship and those, like yourself, inviting us to slow and peace.
Ashley, like the other commenters have said, you captured this so-very-human condition so well! We hunger, don’t we (?), for a speed that is more constant – say, maybe third gear, where we’re still moving theough life but at a pace that doesn’t have our heart racing, frantic. As I contemplate this further I think it’s largely about “breath”. “Calm” and “frantic” (and every state in between) all reside there…in the fullness or shallowness, in the gentle or the forced. If we can (only!) bring our mindfulness to bear on our breathing, with no great effort or over-thinking it, we can still “move” but move in “stillness.” no? :)
Lovely writing, as always! xo, mama
Breathe, yes! Move in stillness, yes! Thanks for helping me put some words to these thoughts and “hunger,” as you say. Most definitely, I’m hungry for more of that third gear. In and out, in and out…
I love this post, and fully relate to your race. This was written so beautifully that reading it actually felt like a nice deep breath for me. Thank you :)
Thank you, houseofewes. Amazing how many of us can relate to the races of one another. Now, if we can just encourage each other more often to take off the shoes and sit for a while.