THE RHYTHMS OF WOMEN - VOL 6.

“I’ve often said we were each other’s tickets out. A silent vow rode beneath the ones we spoke aloud; we were giving one another a fresh start from our hometown. Using the military and a change in geography to run away and begin again.

When I was preparing to separate from my ex-husband, I did everything I could to not move back. Still, the pieces fell into place and I arrived.

Less than a year later he came back too. The long sigh that trailed on the monotony in his voice said it all - he was kicking and screaming inside. I knew the feeling all too well.

I think we both knew of a baggage here. Though I never could place my finger on what it was, I see now it was the essence of what magnetized him and I together. Our wounds spoke to one another and when our marriage dissolved, they got louder. But a decade’s worth of work that blanketed them for a time couldn’t anymore. Back at square one, we both had to begin again; the place where so much of them lay frozen in time had pulled us back. The baggage was at our respective doorsteps and we each had choices to make.

There are things I’ve done every year since returning and each time they look dramatically different as the consequences of those choices were made manifest. At times this revisiting has felt excruciatingly painful. Sometimes really lonely. But a few times and with more frequency, I feel so lucky.

A kind man asked me this day - at an annual music festival that again, looked so different this year - “honey, do you want a chair?”

“No, thank you” I said, though grateful for the care.

I’m alive.

Holding my girl as she sleeps.

Feeling the music in sync with my heartbeat.

Her growing weight is making my arm ache.

The mother in me is reminiscing back to when she was a baby.

And her fresh face painting transferring red to my clothing.

There it is again, I think. Red.

I’m on the ground.

My hands resting on the dirt of my hometown.

I’m well and I feel it all now.