Waves: Crests and Troughs

Barbara, Mom, and sister at Crane's Beach

I am ten, at the beach, standing jittery in waves to my waist … waiting … watching … until throwing myself on the biggest crest … I’m rushing forward thrown into the trough … scraping my belly. Landing hurts, but I stand—exhilarated—and do it again!

In January, at Meherabad, my right knee buckles, and I have surgery, followed by a surgical injection in February. I am now seventy. In March a bad cough begins, weakening and scaring me. Four doctors’ visits, three antibiotics, and swine flu tablets get me to America in April, with the thought, I will enjoy my trip. Happy, coughing until two days before I return in May, I realize that if I can do this, I can do anything.

Early June, I am cutting up a pumpkin when I feel myself “flower into ecstasy.” I am light, full, expansive—shapeless … I swell then ebb. I note. I wonder. Then I smile, thinking of the extremes I’ve been through since January.

When I can’t control my body, with its determining thoughts and emotions, I need to remember the rising and falling of waves—appreciating unknown reasons are at work and possibilities that I’ll know only as I live into them.

My realization is, “We live with ease and difficulty, which, when seen as repeating patterns that are purposeful, may open our awareness and increase our growth, plumbing the vastness of our inner and outer resources.”