April 16/Full Moon

Watch Me Practice

Today is the full moon. It’s supposed to reach its apex at 1:55 pm today, central time zone, and from there the night’s light will begin to wane. The internet is saying that this is a pink moon, but I rejected that and looked up Ojibway names specifically. I found it this moon is called a sugarbushing moon. And the Dakotah reference I found gave me three different choices, moon-when-the-streams-are-again-navigable, moon-when-the-ducks-came-back, moon-in-which-the-geese-lay-eggs. From these names you get a sense of how our time would best be spent here if we were in a more reciprocal relationship with nature. I will link my sources below.

Also, happy passover for all who celebrate. Did you know that the seder always coincides with the full moon? A story of freedom and responsibility, perfect for our current times? Also Blessed Ramadan to my friends who are in the midsts of that season. And last but not least, Happy Easter tomorrow to all who observe that holy day.

Thanks to Becka, we have some family maps that mark where Dad’s people came from. Here’s a screenshot showing the Flåm railroad going through the heart of Lærdal.

Today, for me this moon is emphasizing something I didn’t intend it to, so I will call it the-moon-of-letting-go-of-best-laid-plans. Yesterday after a sleepless night and a trip to the ER with high anxiety and breathing concerns, Dad cancelled our trip. Important information first. His oxogen level is good and he was back home and sleeping well last I heard. He had travel insurance so he could make that kind of decision more easily.

As for me, I’m struggling with my losses. And the automatic thoughts that come up around said losses. For example, the once in a short lifetime trip was too good to be true. Who did I think I was anyway. That kind of BS. Before I scramble to see what can be what can be salvaged, I’m making space for all that is already here.

Before this experience can be transmuted, I need to recognize and acknowledge all the imagined things that I lost. The main one is the time. I had quite a vision of what this time with my dad would have been like. Going on this cruise would have created a whole special world for us, or at least in my mind. An opportunity to explore our roots and return with the elixir for the both of us. An opportunity to face the east and really see the mechanisms of manifest destiny first hand. So it is the loss of that fantasy of new understandings, of being with him in a different way, and this special different time. I will see him again, on his territory in near time, I expect, but I cannot expect the transformative experience that the trip of my imagination would have offered. Alas. We have a pattern of me going to visit that spans many cycles of years and that will resume.

Another loss was the fantasy of myself. I was to try something on with this trip. In some ways it was not new, I was to join in an experience that while one I may not have chosen for myself, was as close to a dream experience as I could imagine. So I was planning to fit in in a way that would add value to us all. The thing that was new was an essence of minimalism that accompanied my preparations for leaving. I felt like I was letting go of old habits, even as I was taking on this separation from the real world. A single purpose of sharing what is meaningful and helpful in collaboration with my fellow travelers and you my dear readers, all the while knowing that I am skilled enough to do it.

Yet another loss is the damn beauty of Iceland and Norway and reuniting with Henry in Amsterdam and the whole iconic backdrop to experience. I can’t see how that will be possible anytime soon. The fantasy of what it would be like to spend time in this space was to set the stage for my whole experience. It also created a project for my time in London, to do the work of distilling my capture of the experience while visiting Henry and his life. It was a bit of a return to the time when I was 18, finishing high school, just beginning college, and visiting mom and bill after they had moved to DC, and left me behind in Minnesota (reluctantly). I would meld into city life there, using the public transport and our national museums, I absorbed the whole ethos and let it become a part of me. I loved that mixture of the freedom to explore and the luxury of being ensconced in the bosom of my family. That is was the whole imagined journey I would undertake. Having it again but this time on a ship with my dad. How dreamy.

Another loss is the hardstop of life as it is right now. I had marked some lasts this last week. A last bath with my mom, at least for now. A letting go of podcasts, other projects, that went by the wayside because I was focussed on preparing to leave. I brought the full force of energy to last times with the knowledge that I would soon not be able to do them any longer. And then the full loss of the things I never even picked up because I was leaving. I can not make a list of those because the justification of things not chosen nor prioritized feels too much like an excuse. I do not want to take that on right now. Another lost opportunity, who’s to say?

There was a point in my life that I practiced a yes to everything approach, and that comes to mind here. Yes to everything makes you drop things all the time. My relationship to dropping things predates that practice to moving back and forth between parents and it is one of the ways I view myself as stunted. But the things that stunt you are also your gifts.

And after all those things said, you and I both know well, this too shall pass. In prep for the trip, I had already wrote much of my post for today, which of course I let go of in order to write this one. It began like this: Here to for I have been sharing my journey of my experience of mom’s decline into Alzheimers. I have not even remotely done justice to that topic but I am about to switch focus as I segue into a journey with my Dad to Norway.

I may yet share some of the rest of the content in a future posts. But who knows? The future is not yet written even if the post is.

In the meantime, if you have ideas for what I should do with this blank time I now have, please tell me! I am at a loss. Until soon.

Much love, Tina

https://ojibwe.net/projects/months-moons/

https://hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.SiouxMoons.html