Essay: Longings...

Our assignment is to write about longings. I have been in a semi-melancholy state for weeks. Just thinking about “Longings” fits my current mood.

I long for security. A security that comes from outside me. I know, I know …. “if that which you seek cannot be found within, it will never be found without”. Whatever! I honor a young girl's longing to be loved and nurtured. I would like to curl up in my grandmother's soft lap and be cuddled. I have on more than one occasion looked at my cat, curled up in a warm fuzzy ball in my lap…… and felt mildly jealous….wanting to trade places.

I long to have enough time and enough $$ ~~ both at the same time ~~ to lie back and relax. I wonder what, if anything, I could create if I had the absolute freedom to spend time doing it? When my son was little I volunteered to teach a class to small children on how to make rattles of leather. Daydreaming, I saw myself as a young Indian woman. I wondered what it would be like if my only job was to make one beautiful rattle this day. That was my responsibility to my tribe. I was not the hunter and the cook and the cleaner; I was the maker of fine rattles. What a treat!

I long to sit beside the stream and tone with the water spirits. This I will do again in the spring. I promise this to myself right now.

I long for a lover’s arms.

I repeat the mantra, “if that which you seek cannot be found within, it will never be found without”. But I long for a summer vacation on the coast, with gentle waves, sun, clouds, distant music, a loving touch and tender words. All in one picture.

I close my eyes and go within. It is a sweet place. “So be it. And so it is”

* annette