we are all mudders
from
the sea (5) – merging and menopause, by freda karpf
“But
this is to anticipate the story, for when the moon was born there was no
ocean.” Rachel
Carson, The Sea Around Us
As shore people can
attest, if water forgets where to go the wrack lines serve as a reminder. Homeopaths will tell you, as will others,
water has memory.
Water moves around
everything and is only momentarily defined by what it passes. Just as your mind
in menopause cannot hold a shape but the memory can stream and arrive on the
shore with you. What you wanted to remember is in the flow.
~
At times Baubo thought of Mrs. Scattergood
as a seine, a weir, a net. Some things
get caught and some remain in the stream.
The context is the flow. It could
be what she has lost hungers for her as well.
What is a woman during her changes?
Does she have a sense of being distinct?
“This is my family.” “This is my
work.” “This is my story.” Is a woman able to stand outside of her life
and note those streams of her life during this time? Mrs. Scattergood struggles with these
things. It is understandable. Out of empathy Baubo would also struggle.
~
“I think of mud when I think of water.
It’s where I come from. Mud, I call ‘My Mudder.’” But that is because she goes to the river and
the water is often not there. But the mud flats are. It’s not a slur, a slam, a cut or anything
like that. She’s come to accept them as being the river as much as the water
and flow. She always remembered the
story of the golem too. Also a part of
her skin like culture and heirlooms. The
truth is, she is also a mudder. We all are.
~
Was her former lover the person whose
meaning would bring meaning to her present?
What would she gain by climbing through her past? Someone once told Mrs. Scattergood that
friends and family are like a river. You
swim in that river your whole life. But
there are currents and eddies, rivulets and streams, tide pools and their yang
opposite, mud flats. All are a part of a river.
The river belongs to the ocean.
And she was a rider of waves.
~
The movement of the wave is an illusion
but the wave is real. What you see is
energy moving. The wave is moving, the water resides. Yet the water is tidal
and takes part in that greater filling and emptying joining the moon’s
dance. The soul moves through spirit the
same way. Inner rivers meet inner oceans in our memory as we swim through the
currents. Some days are riders.
~
Some journeys bring us back to marry parts
of ourselves we thought we had left.
They might be parts of us that never were but like myths that never were
but are always. The movement, the
timing, the coincidences, that is what is eternal about all of our
journeys. Our dreams fold reality back
into our deep selves so that we can ride the waves in our inner oceans and move
through the beauty that always belonged to us but was submerged and
forgotten. Water has memory and memory
swims in its own waters.
~
Dreams evaporate as you approach
them. Stepping stones do not lead you
there. When Mrs. Scattergood was young
she wanted to take care of the ocean. Those were the early days of knowledge
about pollution. The dream hasn't
changed from wanting to serve the ocean; but the interconnected nature of our
world has surfaced in her knowing; in the knowing of all those that work to
serve ecology.
~
Mrs. Scattergood, when days were good,
felt privileged just to be able to love the beauty here. She wanted paths toward wholeness, not
roads. The innocence of being young and
finding solutions should not be abandoned when the world and you grow
older. When she was young she thought
war didn’t make sense; and that people would stop it once they realized. When she was young she thought pollution
could be cleaned and that’s what she would help to do. Since she understood the power of maintaining
dreams, the floating world of hope, buoyant and steeped in soul, wrapped in
silk but ready to fly like a butterfly when the sun has worked its spell, was a
dream of peace, of wetlands breathing like the earth’s lungs; all things in
balance. A natural flow for every place
and being along the chain of life. And
the essential, the wildness that is truly nature, would be respected and free
from the limitations of the human imagination. This was her dream.
~
She never knew how to tell anyone so she
just kept it to herself. There were many
times that she felt like all conversations were just like the seesaw when her
brother left her high in the air and rolled off. You come down hard and you don't just bounce
once. Mrs. Scattergood had grown into adulthood acting as if she was alone in
the world. At thirty-two Mrs.
Scattergood considered herself to be at her life’s golden ratio. Half and half. Turns out, it was more like a
fulcrum than a ratio. Sometimes just
like a seesaw with her brother rolling off.
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