Life Is A Fickle Mistress

An extra long string of reddish brown Rudraksha beads hangs in the corner of my porch.

They’re on the side where the breezes seldom enter. This morning the wind is gently swinging the strand so that it makes a rhythmic click-clack sound as it taps against the wood frame, honing my attention.

A humming bird comes to the screen, then a bummble bee.

The school bus is coming. A lumbering yellow behemoth returned to make its first day-of-the-new-school-year pass by our house and down the street. It’s shiny. Looks new. Still in the East, the sun makes a silhouette, counting only one head on board. It’s still early. I watch as the driver slowly makes the turn from the main road, “new” — I think to myself.

This morning life seems more present, more here than yesterday. Excruciatingly so, and I wonder if this has anything to do with the news I received last night.

A neighbor’s child was killed in the dark, early morning hours the day before. A fiery, violent car crash. She was exiting the interstate to come home. So close to home. I can see her home from here. The place where her parents slept unbeknownst their child would perish that morning and force them to contact her childhood dentist for records.

Life is a fickle mistress. This morning She seems to be saying, ‘I will go on with or without you. Pay attention.’

Letting life in means pain. Paying attention, being connected to it will bring us agony with a surety which does not barter. But She is not without heart. The price of admission paid in full will also bring joy.

This morning I feel a nearly tactile agony for my neighbor’s loss. It looms over all of us in this tiny nook of the world. Today, the breezes shepherd their sadness, gently nudging it through the grassy field towards me where it mingles with the leaves of the old oak sentinels lining my place in this little town. The oak whispers a sad lament as my heart aches for them.

Is this what it means to live fully awake? To allow life to have Her way with me, with my heart? To pay the dowry which marrys each of us one to another?

If this be the price, then I will pay the mistress’s fee and count my days of joy with gratitude, indeed.