Birth and Re-Birth

Linda says our Stream of Consciousness prompt for today is, birth/berth. Quite appropriate for labor day weekend! Linda’s eldest son was born in September, and he’ll be 23. My eldest son was born in September and he’ll be 32. He’s also my only son. He was born on 9/11, long before 9/11 became associated so heavily with destruction, but also rallying and all kinds of complicated mess. My son is a complicated person, less of a mess than he was, way less. In fact, he’s made me proud of him lately. His daughter was born September 10th. I’m going to see them both in September. Two more weeks! I can hardly wait to see them!

I hope I get to witness a real live birth up close and personal some day. Birth is fascinating! Maybe I’ll get to see my daughter have a baby. But not any time soon. She is 24 and still has some things to work on. (Yeah, I know we all do.) She was born in May when I was 37 years old. A bit old to have a baby, but she kept me young and wore me out sometimes, too. Being born in May, under the sign of Taurus, the bull, she is strong-willed, like my father, also born in May. I hope her strong will pays off as much as his did. I have to remember what I was like when I was 24: a complicated mess, but inching my way toward the adult world. We are late bloomers.

Sometimes I think we have little re-births throughout life, like when we have a major life change. We can be born again finding God, or finding ourselves. My retirement feels like being born again, coming back to myself who was waiting patiently all the time.

I’ve had the feeling of being born again while walking on a deer trail with my dog years ago.  It was just me and Jesse hiking at the state park. We got off the main trail (you’re not supposed to do that, so I’m not recommending it) and went down this trail overgrown with bushes and trees to the point that I had to crouch  down while I walked. It was like a tunnel. Coming out of that tunnel felt like freedom, exhilaration, being born!

John Denver, in Rocky Mountain High, sings about being born again.

“He was born in the summer in his 27th year,

coming home to a place he’d never been before.”

 

The Saturday Stream of Consciousness is born again every Saturday. To learn more, visit:

https://lindaghill.com/2017/09/01/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-sept-217/

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” “Begin with the word ‘The’,” or simply a single word to get your started.

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people can come and read your post! For example, in your post you can write “This post is part of SoCS:” and then copy and paste the URL found in your address bar at the top of this post into yours. Your link will show up in my comments for everyone to see. The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top. NOTE: Pingbacks only work from WordPress sites. If you’re self-hosted or are participating from another host, such as Blogger, please leave a link to your post in the comments below.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. As a suggestion, tag your post “SoCS” and/or “#SoCS” for more exposure and more views.

8. Have fun!

The Windsong

Maybe it’s because it’s been windy here, or maybe it’s because I miss John Denver. “The Windsong” came to me for Helen’s Song Lyric Sunday theme to “post a song with a word that describes a sound in the title or lyrics.”

“The wind is the whisper of our mother the earth…..”

See all the lyrics here

or just relax and listen:

 

Old Soul Mountains

In high school and beyond, I listened to John Denver sing, “Rocky Mountain High,” over and over. I sang along with him and longed for the Rockies with the feeling that that’s where I belonged. Yet, after all these years, I’ve still never seen the Rockies in person.

Living on the east coast for most of my life, I’ve settled for visits to the Appalachians. I love them, because they are mountains. But I’d always felt like they weren’t quite enough. Like they weren’t the real deal, until last weekend.

My friend and I spent Labor Day weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. On the first morning, I woke early to a lovely sunrise.

By mid-day, the sun brightened the crisp blue sky as we hiked a moderately difficult  trail on Beech Mountain.  The waterfall gleamed like silver flowing over smooth rock and fed a creek who’s cool water tasted cleaner than any I can remember.

Later that day, I shared my longing for the Colorado Rockies with my friend who is well traveled. She talked about how the Rockies don’t have the tree coverage of the Appalachians and about how Colorado had become heavily “developed.” I remembered John Denver singing about “more people, more scars upon the land.”

My friend reminded me that the Appalachian Mountains are much older than the Rockies though they used to be at least as grand. Time has weathered the eastern mountains into gentler slopes covered by a rolling blanket of green and smokey blue.

I started to wonder if maybe these gentle old soul mountains are just as good as the Rockies. They may not be as dramatic, but they sing their own sweet song. My heart sings in their presence, like John Denver sang in “Country Roads,”

“Life is old there, older than the trees…”

On our second evening in the mountains, we went up to Oz.

A prosperous amusement park in the 70s, The Land of Oz is now open for a couple designated weekends in the summer and fall. No one was home, but we peered through a mysterious locked gate at the glowing yellow brick road, and I imagined skipping off to see the wizard, and meeting Glinda, or being Glinda, since I’ve always wanted to play her character.

 

Then I sat on a hill near the Oz bridge and thought about how there’s no place like home, and how nice it is to live in a state that has mountains on one end and the ocean on the other….

 

….and I watched the most magnificent sunset I’ve ever seen in my life.

I still want to visit the Rockies, but now I know

I am exactly where I belong.

There’s no place like home.