Noticing

Sometimes I feel a little guilty, it's been almost three years since Gil's death and I still haven't reentered the fray, so to speak.  I say I'm still working on deferred maintenance of my body, soul, home and farm, but is that enough?  Shouldn't I be reengaging with friends, giving back to the world from the gifts I've been given, "getting over it" as a friend asked me?

I don't know,  and that's the simple truth.

I relish not knowing, not being sure, open to the odd syncronicities, not sure what to make of it all.  I like noticing things, little things, like tracks in the snow which I can only guess at their origins.

I am a noticer.   I remember walking in the Arboretum when Gil and I were first together and noticing this and that and his saying "You think too much".  My noticing is not thinking so much as it is being open.  Some of it may be trying to figure out cause and effect , like my recent epiphany about freezing radiant floor tubes, but mostly it's just being aware of what weather front is blowing though my soul, what I am drawn toward, what away from.  I hear people, some close, some far, in pain or crisis, and I nod, I bear witness to how hard it is to be alive, and to be growing up, always being challenged with more.  I know that feeling.  I watch my goats, two older and bigger, two younger and smaller deal with hay and shelter, my sibs and I as we deal with our relative positions to our past.  I don't know what it all means, but I notice it.

Perhaps the blessing I have of time, time without pressure to earn a living, or care for a spouse of kids, perhaps that blessing is time to just be.  It may not be forever, I suspect I will be seduced into a cause or a project, a relationship or (heaven forbid) a crisis and reengage with gusto, but not now. Now may be the time to simply notice being alive, how good it feels to breathe, how beautiful the sky is, how the sun rises and the moon sets and the snow falls, bearing witness by not knowing, simply noticing.