How to Run Away

...by Staying Here.

Dear Friend and Fellow Maker,

I want to run away. Do you ever want to also? I have this thought more often than you might want to know. But I’m feeling this afresh here at the start of a New Year and with particular potency in the ongoing news from Memory Care about my dear mom.

Equally, I desire to stay here. I sit here every morning in my studio in the chair that faces east, watching the blue-black ink of early morning (5am) fade slowly over the hours, seeing colors ooze from somewhere under the sky, breathing over the neighborhood with glorious light. Some days the light is diffused and dreamy. Other days it is bright and cheery. Today, the light is somewhere in between, just as I am in between a full out run and resigned inertia. I want to stay here in my chair all day long, all year even, watching the birds come and go at the feeder, identifying those I’m able, wondering about those I do not have names for yet, marveling at them all.

Prior to this moment, as the coffee brewed, I sat at my spinning wheel, plying delicious merino wool singles, allowing my thoughts to spin gently as the twisted strands become relaxed yarn wound onto the bobbin. It seems a fitting image of life, of our days, each one spun and then wound up into a beautiful hank of yarn, a story of love and living and promise too. I’d like to stay here all day if I could, pausing only for a bite to eat and a cup of tea, letting the world go by as my wheel spins yarn after yarn.

Soon I will go for a walk, once the sky is awake and shoes are donned. Sidewalks I’ve known for over 20 years, meander in and out of our neighborhood here in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Couldn’t I just keep on walking, all day? Couldn’t I simply watch the cracks go clicking by one by one, or the tips of my shoes tapping out in rhythm, or relishing each tree I pass by whose gestural form is so achingly lovely this time of year without any leaves hiding the structure? How I long to draw them all…to stay here, gazing at the natural world as I walk.

I feel as if I am seeing this for the first time, but I know it is not new. Here on January 1st, it sure seems new to me, this idea, this could-it-be possibility that in each of these things, each of these places I long stay….that they are somehow places where I am able to run away? Could they be portals to somewhere else I long to be?

Perhaps it is precisely in the piercing longing I have to merge with the rising morning light that I am able to rise on the wings of the dawn. Perhaps in spinning yards of soft beautiful wool I am transported to a place on the far side of the sea, where aging and Alzheimer’s touches no one, least of all my mother. And perhaps, just perhaps, if I walk and walk the sidewalks and trails lined with sentinels barking grace, willowing joy, maple-ing a hand at every corner…perhaps like Forrest Gump I will run (or walk) right into my life, just as it is.

The issue for me is this—-Can I trust this desire to run away? Can I trust that if I truly ran away in these ways, every day, that I would be led back to home and hearth? Or will I wind up somewhere else, more lost than I am now? It seems to boil down to this: Can one truly run away from it all? From all the sadness, all the grief, all the uncertainty of watching a loved one fall deeper and deeper into Alzheimer’s? Can you run away from this by staying right here? Staying in each sunrise just as long as you possibly can? Staying at the wheel of your life, spinning your days mindfully and gracefully? Staying in each footfall along well-worn paths, looking for the sentinels, the hands reaching out to you to offer solace, to extend help, to give cheer, and to mourn with you?

If I run away like this, perhaps some day I will arrive back home. I myself may not be the same person then. And home may be a different place than I once knew it to be. Just like my mom, I can’t seem to hang onto the way things are in this exact moment. In all her staying here, she is actually going, leaving us for a home we long for her to go to so she isn’t suffering anymore. Yet even in that longing, we desperately want her to stay here with us.

These intense longings, to run away and to stay here, are seemingly polar opposites. Yet I wonder if they are both together, the very real and acute indicators of being human. Can I hold each intensity with spaciousness and grace? Can I live in the now and the not yet without being pulled apart, strand by strand, step by step?

I really don’t know. What I do know is that it is time to go for a walk.

With gratitude for your presence in reading this,

Jennifer

P.S. Taking

Beth Kempton

‘s Winter Writing Sanctuary is proving to be just what I need here at the beginning of a New Year and as my mom appears to go deeper into the late stages of dementia. This is a hard road. Beth’s encouragement to write feels like a ticket of permission to run away on side roads paved with words. Her writing prompts aid in the processing I need for this period of time and I am so grateful. May you also find solace in any running away or staying put that your creativity may offer you! Weave yourself a magic carpet. Knit a many-colored coat of armor. Paint a window to a world of hope. Draw a hot-air balloon, allowing you to float aloft, yet tethered to the earth for safe-landing. Blessings all! 🙏💖

P.P.S. And if you care to share your story of wanting to run away or how staying here with whatever creativity you enjoy helps you in the difficult paths of life, I’d love to read about it in the comments. I’m sure others would too! ☺️