Summer Moon of First Harvests
The morning after. The Woolly feeling lingers here, a gentle mantle over the back, around the fire pit where we gathered. A primary, perhaps the primary, purpose of the Woollies is to see and be seen. No invisible men allowed. We have bum knees, wonky shoulders, weak legs, poor eyes and sore backs. These are acknowledged, not for sympathy, but for recognition that we are each the sore back, the poor eyes, the weak leg, the wonky shoulder, the bum knee. And that we are none of us only or even mostly our ailments, more and mostly we are the ones who have spent this 25 year+ journey together, time that included wholeness, able-bodiedness and now includes physical decline.
We’re not exactly a support group. We don’t try to fix each others problems (usually). We do go in for empathy, but not too much because too much focuses the group on one while the whole has been and is the most important. We’re not a group of friends, or, at least, not only a group of friends, rather we are fellow pilgrims, traveling our ancientrails in sight of each other, calling out from our journey and hearing the other call out from theirs.
Though our ancientrails intersected less in times past, as we move into third phase life they intersect more and more. How to make this transition. How to create a life anew when work is no longer the primary lodestar. How to look death in the face, unafraid, even welcoming. No, not suicidal welcoming, but unafraid of what is common, ordinary, part of the path. We look at each others hearts, hear the pulse of each other’s blood. This is what it means to be human.
