Lost and Found

At the tail end of July we lost one of our fur babies.? I know there are far more inconsolable losses to suffer than this one, and yet – the thing about loss is that each one climbs on the shoulders of all the previous ones.? Cumulative loss can sometimes have the feeling of a tipping point: is there such a thing as one loss too many?

He slipped his harness in the forest off Price Drive that runs alongside the edge of Groot Constantia Vineyards.? I have to say that if you are going to be lost, this is a pretty place to do it in.? In our attempts to call him home, which included much traversing of the forest shaking bags of KFC and calling his name and setting up a cat trap each dawn and dusk, we managed to trap a mongoose and a civet, (we, of course, let them go) but no Edward (named for his fellow red-headed gorgeous boy Ed Sheeran).

To date he’s not found his way back to us.? We have, at least for now, lost him, and he has lost us.? Sometimes, when I’m awakened by the rain in the night, I wonder what he might have found instead??? Adventure, wanderlust, empowerment, a new home??

It is said (who starts these things off I wonder?) that when one door closes another one opens.? Maybe.? But whoever said it forgot to mention the time frame involved.? The gap between the closing and the opening.? What do you call that space?? And what do you do inside of it?? We are in such a hurry are we not.? Hurrying from here to there, wherever there is.? If we are never here, then it stands to reason we are never there either.

I was already wintering before Eddie, startled by a very large running man, managed to wriggle out of his harness and skitter away.? His disappearance shut the door on any wriggling out of wintering that I may have been tempted to push for.?

“There are gaps in the mesh of the everyday world, and sometimes they open up and you fall through them into Somewhere Else.? Somewhere Else runs at a different pace to the here and now, where everyone else carries on….. Somewhere Else exists at a delay, so that you can’t quite keep pace.?

Wintering is a season in the cold.? It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider.? However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful.” - Katherine May – Wintering.

Before we lost Eddie, I lost ‘promised’ work.? Before I lost the promised work, I lost enthusiasm.? Before that I had already begun to go through the motions. Wintering is not, in my understanding of it, something that we choose to do (although maybe we should?), just as loss is generally not something we sign up for in advance.

There is a difference, in my mind, between wallowing and settling in.? The difference is choice.? The invitation to wallow in wintering is heady and strong.? Let’s face it “rejected and sidelined” doesn’t exactly feel like “whoopee” does it???

Settling in, on the other hand, requires acceptance.? And acceptance, once found, is a gamechanger.? The minute I accept that I am wintering I start to back myself in the process.? Bye bye “involuntary and lonely”, hello watchfulness and curiosity.

Here is where the finding truly begins.? The low slant of winter sunshine through the wrought iron bars of my Victorian cottage.? The sting of the cold sea, breathtaking as I dive in.? Sitting in perfect stillness, melting into the heartstring pull of The Song of the Butterfly https://youtu.be/uIiePhmCO2o.

Finding encouragement in the acceptance of others: dear friends who are forging ahead in seasons of spring, summer or fall, who know I am in the Somewhere Else of wintering and whose love doesn’t falter.? Friends who turn up in the search for Eddie.?

Showing up for the things I said yes to in my diary, whether I ‘feel’ like them or not, because I said yes, and then finding in those appointments the unexpected gifts of communion, connection, fellowship.? The other day I experienced the brilliance of the Spring mind of someone who is deep in the Here Now of his life. ??I found that listening to him from the Somewhere Else of my wintering reminded me that even as I might long for the questing optimism I heard in him, the more I cherish my own experience the more I am refusing the outcast status that our hurry up world imposes on those who are wintering.

As Katherine May goes on to say:?

“The changes that take place in winter are a kind of alchemy, an enchantment performed by ordinary creatures to survive: dormice laying on fat to hibernate; swallows navigating to South Africa; trees blazing out the final weeks of autum.? It is all very well to survive the abundant months of the spring and summer, but in winter we witness the full glory of nature flourishing in lean times.? Doing those deeply unfashionable things – slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting – are radical acts these days, but they are essential.? This is a crossroads we all know, a moment when you need to shed a skin.? If you do, you’ll expose all those painful nerve endings, and feel so raw that you’ll need to take care of yourself for a while.? If you don’t, then that old skin will harden around you.”?

Here's to new skin, and to Eddie either finding his way back to us or a new home.

From my brave heart to yours,

Trisha