The mystery gardener begins to plant things in his carefully prepared mulch beds. On the trees, little buds stick out their green tongues, tasting the air. Daffodils turn their cheerful faces outward, worldward. The next-door neighbor who waves at me through the window when he goes by for his afternoon walks, comes over one morning to talk neighborhood business with my friend.
“You haven’t waved to me,” he says to me when I answer the door.
“I haven’t seen you,” I say, checking my memories of the recent past; maybe I’d been away from my desk or absorbed in a task when he’d gone past.
“I’ve been going to play pickle ball,” he says, relenting, letting me off the hook, “it’s the fastest growing game in the U.S. It’s more fun than walking. I hate walking. I don’t mind climbing a mountain, but walking bores me.”
“Well, I’m glad to know you’re still alive,” I say honestly, but with a sudden twinge that I’d forgotten that he’d had a health scare months before. It’s too late to call my words back—let me remind you of your mortality—still, I do mean them.
It’s something to be alive.
On a morning when
pain swells to fill the space of my body and leaches out into the room I’m in, I
listen to a meditation in which the teacher reminds me of, “the great gift of
waking up again.” Oh yes, I think, I forgot. It is a great gift. Even when
being alive isn’t easy.
It’s something to be alive and open to letting the world in. I do this by participating in some online meetings and by tutoring online. Interacting with people, even by screen, pulls me out of myself and gives me a taste of what makes travel so fun for me; that insight into others’ universes, the joy of community, the thrill of new experiences. It’s all too simple to let the world close in, close down and to feel the “resistance that is a small locked room” hold me prisoner, as another meditation teacher says. But all I have to do is turn the key and walk through the door. On that other side is the whole world—the wind against my face, the warmth of the sun against my skin, the expanse of the sky above me, the dreams and hopes that move me forward, and in that world is connection, experience, learning, and fun. I want to refresh the fun.
I want to turn my face outward, worldward once again like the daffodils.
“I’m still alive!” the neighbor shouts from his porch to me where I sit on this porch when he and his wife return from some outing.
“I’m glad you’re still alive,” I shout back. And I mean it.
The neighbor fiddles with the key in the lock and then he says, “I’m glad you’re still alive too!”
And there, in the sunshine, on the porch with the hummingbirds claiming territory and chasing each other off, I feel the electric buzz under my skin, the beating of my heart, the tidal pull of my breath, the delight of someone else’s care, the feeling of being alive. What a thing that is.
