A Gift To Be Fully Present

Lately I have kept a grueling schedule.  This has enabled me to traverse old friends of familiar interstates heading from South Florida, up and over to the Southwest over to Texas, turning northerly to Oklahoma, and back across I-40 in Arkansas, to Memphis, then US 78 through Mississippi to Alabama.  Today I am a bit melancholy and tired.

Being deep in my head is common after spending any length of time with my parents longer than it takes to leave a voicemail.  I am always .... anyway.  It was a gift to stop by today and spend 3 hours with them. Time that if I let it slip away, would not return again. This visit was okay.

Once I drove on to McDonough, GA (south of Atlanta) to deliver my load, I decided to stay over night, begin fresh in the morning the trip to South Carolina and back to Atlanta on Sunday.  So I went next door to the receiver to an abandoned warehouse to park during a snarling summer thunderboomer.

Enjoying WREK 91.9 Jazz radio, I even discovered I could download an APP on my new Sprint EVO 4G that streams this station and 4, 999 others. It was funny hearing the radio, and streaming a few seconds behind. Like dueling banjos.  Saturday night programming here is amazing jazz, swing, Dixie...etc.  Almost no talk or vocals at all. Ahhhhh yes, MY kind of music.  Giving in to the swing...

Decided to go for a barefoot walk along the grass skirts.  Talk about FULLY PRESENT?  The feel of the squishy, soft grass.  The slight dampness. The roll of the foot reminds me how fearfully and wonderfully human beings are created to be. I stepped onto the pavement just to feel the texture difference.  Still almost warm, gritty, smooth, sandy...

Ended up at one end of the building, out of earshot of the truck radio.  There I stopped and did what I have needed to do for a WEEK.

B-R-E-A-T-H-E.

For the sheer pleasure of being able to do so.  For inspiration. For clearing.

Eyes closed, deep, full, long, slow breaths. Giving myself the gift of nothing more pressing on my duty than  following my breath.

It always touches my tender heart when I give in to this basic need of breathing on purpose and I discover the world underneath it all.  The 2 or 3 hot rain drops on my face.  The birds are different in the pines to my left, than they are in the oaks to my right.  It is dusk, and the cicadas are stirring a concert among the woods. The occasional burping of thunder, off in the distance teasing a parched Atlanta.

The feel of the ground beneath me. The bizz of electricity along a guide wire.  The breeze that stirs my hair, tickles, and cools my arms and legs.The yap of a dog, some neighborhood away through the trees. The sticky humidity and drying sweat.

In the last two days I have had phone calls with both of my daughters.  I estimate 2 1/2 hours of talk time. Texting, emails.  That's in addition to the round I made to the people I mentor and support.  I'm used to spending holidays working, and even prefer that than to sit around alone.  Yes, once upon a time, it was family .... now, it is quiet of voices and laughter.

This is why it meant so much to me to be Fully Present with the ambient love of God in all He has created and sent my way today, in this exact moment.

As I got closer to my truck, I recognized the music was a trombone soloist scatting on his horn.  I do not miss my ex husband Ole in the slightest.  What I do fondly remember is that our home ALWAYS had the sounds of music in it.  Ole riffing on his trombone was how he relaxed after his work day.  He came home, made the rounds, took off his shoes, and before he turned on the TV or Nintendo, he made love to that trombone of his.

I play as well and there was a time it was a duet.  The girls can pick up any instrument and within moments be carrying along with their daddy.  Or they would sing with his playing.

That kind of moment is what I long for when I think of "home" and family.  Sharing love of each other through laughter, song, impromptu dance, and inspiration.

It was Paul Rutherfords, "Tetrology" that was playing.  In the back ground, you could hear the echo... it sounded familiar.  Again, an Ahhhh of a beloved memory.  The wooden practice rooms or stages, always alight  with the hum and cacaphony of instruments warming up and tuning, never quite together, just a NOISE that was beautiful in its necessary reality.

And I miss that.

When the radio timed out, I didn't renew it. I had turned ol' Andy Android off before my walk.  I am sitting doors and windows of my truck home open, listening to the birds banter and the thunder rumble around me. Feeling a bit of apprehension noticing the miniscule spider swinging on its silk in the passenger window.

This half hour or so of deliberately breathing, in, out, and sending the white healing air to my aching tense spots, and exhaling the dusky mess of pain and  inner blues out has relaxed me. The walk back to my truck was slow and rambling, the grass still squishy underfoot.

If tomorrow comes? It will be a new day with no mistakes in it.  There will be an opportunity to seize the day and hit it balls to the wall.

Tonight? I breathe in. I breathe out. And I smile, fully present. I am full of gratitude and love and have exercised forgiveness of myself and others. It has been a good week. And thus it closes, and a new one sits before me.

Soaking in the moment,
Jan M. Olsen
~J~