Roads

I look around at the countryside as I steer my silver Toyota along the winding county roads on my late afternoon commute home from work. I want to really look, with intention, seeing it all, taking in the familiar landmarks. I have been driving these roads most of my adult life while earning a living providing a health ministry of sorts to prisoners. Soon I will no longer be driving this route, as I've made a decision to transfer to another practice site. I don't think these rural roads will ever be a regular part of my work life again.

Along the route, I notice the humble country church that advertises "Free Clothes" for poor folks on its small marquee sign every year before Christmas and Easter. I cross the ancient concrete bridge over the New River, on the border between Bradford and Union counties. I see the rustic wooden A-frame house, nestled in the woods, that I used to covet in my younger years. The almost-stately red brick farmhouse, with its rooftop spire and surrounding rolling acerage catches my eye, reminding me of a Kentucky thoroughbred horse farm. I see the old Florida cracker house, with its peeling exterior paint and rusty tin roof, on the main drag in the little town of Brooker. I glance over at the replica of a green and yellow John Deere tractor in the fenced backyard of a day care center where children are playing. It makes me smile.

I think about how much my world has changed since I first began making this daily drive. I started traveling these roads before the internet, and before I learned yoga, watercolor painting, and how to grow bamboo. It was before I had ever owned a home, before I made some not-so-great decisions that I'd rather not recall, and before I discovered delights such as Lindor white truffles and Kendall Jackson chardonnay. It was before Maui, Cancun, and Montreal. It was before I met and married my beloved Jack. It was before I discovered, embraced, and later rejected the Unitarian Universalist faith. It was before I learned to practice meditation and before I lost my sister. It was before several fur children came along, spent their lives with me, and then left - Happy, Goldie, Blondie, Pixie, Lily, and Paco. It was before dental crowns, graying hair, achy joints, and melanoma. It was before Starbucks, cell phones, and hybrid cars.

When I began traveling these roads, my future seemed full of possibilities, vast and limitless. More than twenty years later, now that I am in my fifties, I realize now that my life will not go on forever, and I will someday become part of eternity and go where ever my grandmother, my mother, and my other post-incarnate loved ones have gone. There's a line in one of my favorite Goddess chants that goes "We all come from the Goddess, and to her we shall return, like drops of rain flowing to the ocean." I am a drop of water in the sea of life. I realize now that I am not separate from anything or anyone. I exist only as part of the whole, even though I have not felt that way for a large portion of my life. I have often felt like I am a space alien and I do not fit in or belong here. Feeling like an outsider has sometimes created painful difficulties and divides in my relationships and my work over the years.

In my mind's eye I see my younger self just beginning her career when she first started traveling these roads. She was about thirty, with a lot of ambition and an advanced college degree. She was newly-divorced, angry, and intense. My mature self wants to give her a hug. I want to enfold her gently in my arms and tell her that she is good and she is loved. I want to let her know that she belongs and she is not alone in this world. I want to assure my younger self that she will find the love of her life, that she will earn a good living, and that she will discover ways to make her life meaningful. I wish I could tell her that although there will be difficult times, she is strong enough to cope with anything that life may bring. I want to tell her to take it easy, breathe deeply, and trust the universe and the process of life. I see her as though I am watching an actor on a movie screen, or like an out-of-body experience where I am hovering somewhere in the atmosphere near her. I cannot make eye contact with her or see her face to face.

I hope that someday there will be an elder self, who has seen her career through to completion and no longer travels down any roads to work. I think my older self will see my young and middle-aged selves in her mind's eye and wish that she could give them both a hug and tell them that everything will turn out all right. Maiden, mother, and crone are the parts of the sacred Triple Goddess as well as three stages in a woman's life. Maybe in my crone wisdom years, I'll find a way to view my younger selves face to face, seeing my parents, grandparents, and all of our ancestors in their eyes, with deep awareness that we are all timeless beings with no birth and no death, always flowing to and from the ocean, and traveling together along the winding roads of the universe.