Abundance of

Kabuli Palaw. 

It was the name of the dish we ate last night. The Lamb was so tender. The rice was so perfectly aromatic. The carrots and raisins were reminiscent of food cooked in a big vat on the street in Chanji 22 years ago. The whole evening I couldn't help but reminisce about what might be similar between Kashgar and Afghanistan. But the similarities were very limited. Looking on a map on the way out I realized that Kashgar is closer to Islamibad than Kabul. Either way the Uygher are their own. 

This all came after a day that was thought provoking and I just want to remember. I need to remember every small blessing and thought of abundance. I am blessed. It's all too often hard to rember or difficult to set the order straight in my mind, for how I got from point A to point B. 

6 Months ago I told someone I loved that I no longer wanted to be married to them. The dicotomy of loving someone, but feeling, after 20 years, like you need to stop hiding, is not a simple thing to feel. I've felt many confused days. I don't think I'll ever stop loving Ariel. But the ways that I feel free are abundant. They are blessed. I'm on a differnt sort of path than I ever saw. I always felt a simple acceptance of the beauty my religion offered me. I didn't even make the choice thinking I was leaving it behind. I know that it is too limited for me to stay. Because I've strayed from the path set by all of the years of Sundays. My parents  set a good example of longsuffering. And while I can't say I was suffering, there was a slow internal snuffing out. 

Joys and complexities that I remember feeling as a child, no an adolescent, that were vibrant and branched out and fealt like tiny candles were lit on the end of each branch. Like i could stand at the base of the tree of my life and see a dozen branches turn into a hundred loves. A hundred small fires that burned within me and brightened at the thought of climbing each branch, maybe even 2 at a time, to discover what was blossoming on the end. The branches fealt strong enough to hold me, like they would grown stronger with each day I climbed. Trees grow slow. I also remember the fear of being alone was great. 

The thing about strong trees is that they grow slowly. As I have felt each branch grow reaching toward the end to form a blossom and a fruit, they have actually grown. The branch that grew out of my love for Ariel, where I grew complacent in my own journey, grew slowly as well. The settlement in my mind of my needs being left on the shelf, while I worked tirelessly to build him up, grew slowly. But there was a deadness in the branch. There were many other branches which grew appropriately vivacious. There was many strong and beautiful branches. 

And there was also a slow rot that set in, so long ago. When I had intrusive thoughts that I pushed aside. There were unkind thoughts that even though I knew they didn't represent me, I felt shame of them. I felt a tiredness in them. All of the water and nourishment was being given to this one branch, and in the end it snapped and broke from the weight of it. 

I feel like now, after 30 years of climbing branches, I'm back down at the base of the tree looking up. I see new branches that weren't the first to call out to me. They're strong and beautiful just like the branches I climbed before. This weekend I feel a reassurance that I can climb those branches. 

I can see the flaws in the metaphore. I can imagine how my mother would rip it apart if I tried to explain it to her this way. Branches down't grow from the base of the tree in the end. They all grow together. and that's what makes those old growth branches so beautiful. Their strength and their age. Their uniformity and even largeness. But I know a bit more about trees. Each year an apple tree is cut and it inspires growth in the brancehs below it. The hormones are triggered by the cutting of branches above. They are activated below. On my old apple trees I get suckers every year from the quince root stock that never had a branch grow. It wasn't designed to give fruit, but rather protect the apple branches from cold or dry. And yet, if I let 1 or 2 of them grow, they would form a tree. Apple branches will do the same. Theres a choice that needs to be made about which branches to cull, and which to keep. But the one you keep will become strong just like the others if it is chosen carefully based on its position, it's angles, its access to light. 

So what are the branches I'm letting grow now that were worth all of the cutting? I sit with 3 kittens running and playing around me. They hiss and they nudge. They snuggle and cry for food and water. They are inside cats. They are protected here and they protect me from loneliness. Outside last night there were 2 goats protected by 1 large white fluff of dog. At first I wasn't sure how they would all fit. But they do. The goats will soon have babies and a new cycle of life will open up new branches. Branches that have had some nourishment, but were blocked out by the large rotting branches above. Now they have a newness of air and light. 

But the most important branch is a branch that has grown slowly within the canopy of other branches. His branch was there all along. And I don't quite know how it's going to grow. It's on my tree, only becuase his own tree grows close to mine. Because I choose it to. We are like a grove of aspens with interconnected roots. Part of the same organism, each with it's own access to light, air and nurturing soil.