shifting

I’m sad. Which makes very little sense considering I’m excited and happy.

I spent the day with my cousin and her groom on Saturday, taking pictures. Their wedding took place at a beautiful camp on a beautiful lake surrounded by beautiful fall leaves. My cousin, she is almost strangely similar to me. She’s creative and sensitive, giggly and anxious, friendly and maybe a little scared. Her eyes are the brightest blue; they matched the lake in the background. She is many years younger than I, and her youth shines from her skin and her smile and her hair is the most beautiful blonde flowy hair.  When I was her age, I downed Dr. Pepper like it was water and furiously chewed the left over ice cubes. Amby does the exact same thing.

I’m working on editing some of the pictures from her day so I can send them to she and Michael before I leave for Creative Alliance tomorrow. I love staring through the pictures while I crop and shade, tint and focus in on beauty. This couple, they look at each other not only with love, but with a cherishing kind of respect that’s rare. They are twin souls who laugh together a lot and love to do the same things. They have interests to share and they love adventure.

They’re going to be alright.

Not one person knows the secrets of marriage on that first day. Sometimes we’re smart and we know with our heads and that’s a start, but no one gets to know the wisdom of commitment that comes in time and lands deeply in the heart. So much of that heart wisdom is hard won, a battle really. A battle more with your own self than with the other person. Nothing bares your dark side like a lifelong promise to strive for more selflessness.  It’s a bit forced, this refining, and we humans are generally rebellious; at least I know I am. The two people in front of me the whole afternoon and evening on Saturday have a lot in place already. I hope they know that. I hope they look back on it and trust it.

It helps me a lot to look back on our wedding day. It wasn’t perfect but it was ours. We were maybe even different people that day than we are now, but there we were, our foreheads pressed together and our hands clasped as our friend and pastor prayed. We were by a lake and the day was just right, sunny and not too hot. Ryan’s face when he first saw me all dressed up for him was different than any other face I’d seen him make. It spoke of true love and surprise and the way he cherishes me. We were giggly and nervous, excited and scared and happy.

And I was sad.

This is a sadness not born of regret or disappointment or anything negative at all. Maybe it’s just because it’s always there, in those of us who are made this way. We ice chomping creatives with our hearts worn on the outside, exposed and worn out so much of the time. And this sadness is also born out of nostalgia and the closing of other doors and in vulnerability. Our giddy nerves are grounded in The Sad, so they go back home to it and we feel it and it’s not even our fault.

It just is.

My honeymoon was peppered with it. I was uncomfortable and overwhelmed even though I was okay. This is the way I’m made and I wish I had known that I was okay.

Today I’m sad but not in a way that makes me want condolences or cheering up. I’m overwhelmed with good, so so grateful for how I get to be here so much of the time with Miles and Asher and Elsie. Then I miss them on the days they are at school and daycare and I’ll miss them so much from Thursday to Sunday when I’m in California.

Sadness comes, for me, with endings and beginnings because you can’t have one without the other.  Two years ago, at Creative Alliance, I found out Elsie was womb-growing, our little acorn surprise. I knew deep within me that nothing and everything was about to change and I was so happy and excited and I was so sad. Something in me knew that the next year and a half were going to be terribly hard and that would mean my creative self would have to wait underneath, getting kicked down and made right all at once.

Ellie and I stood in that canyon in Ojai the first morning of knowing about Elsie Jane and I shook a little and she said it was going to be okay and then she didn’t lie, she knew too, and so she added, but at first it’s going to be really hard. We both thought that meant that we had to let go of our current way of planning and scheming up all kinds of creative projects because there wouldn’t be room for them for a while. We were choosing acceptance in that  moment because of course we both knew that this baby was a miracle gift of grace and surrender.

But little did we know what the next couple of years would hold.

Now suddenly and slowly, those two years have passed and my Elsie Jane is here, 16 months old and fierce and giggly, friendly and anxious. Nothing before her got erased or didn’t matter, it simply shifted and shifts are painful while they’re also exciting and happy and just as they should be.

I feel a rumbling again. A shift toward being fully entrenched in both my family and my creative soul, because I can. It’s no coincidence that this comes right before Creative Alliance, an experience where a girl is called to sit with her heart-gut dreams, and sometimes if we rest a little while in those thoughts, the momentum begins again.

It will always be messy to be both mother and artist, adult and child, and sometimes there is only room for one or the other. For me, mothering trumps  art so much of the time and I am okay and sad and happy either way.

Creative Alliance, here I come. Who knows what will be planted this time. All I know is, easy or hard, it will be good.