Barefoot, I trek through the freshly cut grass, glancing at the Big Dipper and the star-studded sky, until I reach a spot tucked away at the back corner of the garage while wrapped snugly in nothing but a blanket.
“I’ll miss this,” I reflect later, thinking about the chorus of frogs’ vocals that drift in through the open bedroom window. But then I remind myself, “You’re right here, right now. There’s no need to miss it. Soak it into your pores, let it move through you like that vibrating bed downstairs you splurged on at the fair.”
I’ve never been one to dwell on what I might miss. If it’s a worry, I face it head-on, tuning in with fingers widening my eyelids, pressing them firmly in place. You will watch, you will see. Miss nothing.
This approach has been with me for most of my life, spending hours in youthful wonder observing ant hills or finding animal shapes and faces in the clouds.
Now, there’s stillness. No typing. Just the sensation of my body against the velvet couch, the laptop’s bright screen, and a thick layer of frog sounds. I play with the feeling of being enough in this space, too. I close my eyes, take faces I love into my mind, and quiet the fear that says I must be more for them, while whispering, “You are enough.”
There’s a rush of multiple reactions all at once: disbelief that I am, the calming of my chest, and a desire to wrap my arms around them.
The barrier to this is striver in me, the metaphorical swimmer with long arms and a thick torso that pushes forward relentlessly, driven to survive, to never surface for air. They’d go unconscious before hitting perfection.
But then a finger snaps and I’m at the pool’s edge, heaving in oxygenated breaths. The pool becomes grainy, and I return to the chorus of frogs, to the sensation of being enough, to a lightness of unhooking from my thoughts.
I pay attention to the subtle shifts around me, sensing changes in the air’s temperature through the slightest touch on my right temple. It’s gentler than the lightest brush of a feather. Or even a piece of down from a runner duck’s undercarriage.
I created a recording of the frogs. Those spectacular frogs. So that anytime I want to recreate the sensation of being here and how much magic I felt being part of it, I’ll have it.
And you can too.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 