AN ODE TO SAFE SPACES

I had a long and rather intense story lined up for today. But sometimes the seriousness and intensity can wait, be put aside, put down, not focused on to make space for the here and now.

The here and now is a cup of tea in hand while ambling through the still in-progress garden. My eyes fall on the area I cleared months ago to create a sheltered space for the hammock to go. The here and now finds me still in running clothes and not yet knowing what I’ll cook for dinner or if I even feel like cooking dinner at all. The lemon tree that needs trimming but waiting on the Golden Orb as it’s web spans across tree to hedge. These arachnids arrival are great season compasses, strong indicators that nature is alright. They bring peace to my nervous system and are welcomed here.

I sit down on the corner bench, still slightly damp from the rain the day before. I notice the Crassula Ovata ‘Pink Beauty’ or Pink Beauty Jade flowering. This succulent tree grew so big that it got too heavy for it’s own feet and on a gusty Saturday morning it fell head over heels into the path of my front door, if only love would blow in the same way. With hand saw and secateurs I started pruning to save and replant as far as possible. Today eight of those replanted branches are colouring my garden pink.

The winter sun spills into cold nooks, glimmers of hope. I love how winter keeps us curious about her mystery by giving us breaks from her relentless hold. The weather can be a shrewd mistress and just when you’ve had enough she puts on her red lips and makes you forget about the storm she just caused. She is crafty but we love her for it no?

I sit and gather all the feelings I don’t want to feel and brave breathing them out here. Life is unpredictable, fast then slow, everlasting and not, fickle and fragile, we don’t have much control. My mind thinks of all the ways life can end and how it would feel. It scares me. So many things scare me. My mind being one of them and my heart even more so. The depth of self is a boat with big sails and once it catches the wind it flies.

I guess what I am getting at is that somehow through the storms I have cultivated safe bays to shelter and rest. Wherever I have rooted, if for a moment or a lifetime, there I made a home. Every corner a celebration of love and loss. The duality of life one can not escape. The feathers from an eagle from the Northern Cape skies deep in the mountains, high on love and adventure. The leopard and the elephant, bronze sculptures that fit in the palm of my hand; small artworks, big spirits collide. Fynbos blooms and flower crowns. Shrines of all that has come and gone but living on in the winter sun.

My grandmother guided me here. To this safe space. To this shack among the fynbos at the foot of the Cape Point mountains. She is never far from heart or mind or hand to hold. We are so much more than just these folds of skin we find ourselves in.

An ode to places that soften our heart spaces.

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