Living in the Between Times
As the leaves under my feet rustle like a taffeta slip, I try to step gently to avoid scaring away deer. On this late November afternoon, the woods near my home are carpeted with goldenrod. Their sunny blossoms have long expired, leaving only wispy brown seeds that cling to wands bowing to the wind. Most trees have surrendered their leaves. In the undergrowth, I catch glimpses of bittersweet alive with bursting orange pods.
November, I decide, is nature’s ultimate in-between. Trees are barren, their naked branches not yet covered with snow. Clumps of Queen Anne’s Lace resemble fancy bird’s nests on a stick, hinting of their former beauty. Milkweed pods have released their silky seeds, which will grow into havens for monarch butterflies come summer.
Tonight, there will be a waxing moon, which will expand from a humble sliver to a luminous sphere before it enters a waning phase, shrinking once more. Aren’t we always in a state of in-between-ness?
Between seasons, between lovers, between the person we are and the person we want to be, between assignments, between vacations, between planting the seeds for green beans and plucking them, between sorrow and delight, between metro stations, between adolescence and adulthood, between buying the lumber and building the house, between handshakes and kisses.
Some health experts reassure us that we are moving from a pandemic to an endemic, from our hospitals crammed with patients on ventilators to a time when we will be able to live with this virus, albeit with yearly boosters and other precautions.
Like the moon, our lives are continually waxing and waning, becoming fuller, becoming less. Moving toward and moving away. We try to stand still but never succeed.
Early during this pandemic, I gravitated toward writing that would comfort my anxious state of mind. Fortunately, I stumbled on a book entitled “When Things Fall Apart,” by Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist nun. Her words calm me like the warmth that comes from cradling a cup of chamomile tea or wrapping myself in a butternut shawl my younger daughter gave me last year for Christmas.
Chodron writes: “Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. The off-center, in between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which if we don’t get caught, we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit.”
Here’s to the in-between times!