Widening circles

Checking in with hope, fear, sadness, and gratitude on a beautiful, late fall day.

I finally went for a walk at 4pm. I try to take one at 10 and another at 12 to break up the morning, but my schedule has shifted for some unknown reason. My kids were on my mind as I walked with a coffee in hand, one of those Styrofoam gas station cups with a tab that flips back on the plastic lid. A neighbor with a curious white pit bull passed me on the north side of the street. I asked about the dog’s ears since white pittie’s often have ear problems. She had just gotten over an ear infection, the woman said. Other neighbors pass. Most look like they’re hurrying home, as if the walk is some kind of penance they do in their retirement.

My neighborhood is part of the Lucas Farm section of Iowa City, named after Iowa’s first governor. It has to have the highest number of Moffitt cottages per block. I’ve been through most of Iowa City and don’t know where else you find houses that look like hobbits have constructed them. They stand back from sidewalks exposed since most leaves have fallen by now, the strength of the trees having pulled back underground.

By the time I return home, evening sunshine touches treetops only. The houses are in shadow. A winter light is here. Days have been shortening for nearly five months now, but it’s taken a while to notice. It will be dark when I get my youngest daughter from daycare.

I’m grateful for the seasons. It’s funny to me that seasons still feel new, fresh even though I’ve now lived in places with distinct seasonal changes for most of my life. A childhood in Florida has kept my default to a two-season year vacillating between Dante’s fifth and third rings. It’s the fall, winter, and mud seasons that catch me off-guard.

I live my life in widening circles

that drift out over the things.

I may not achieve the very last,

but it will be my aim.

~ Rilke

I pause with those last words: catching me off-guard. Surprises. New, expanding experiences. Like ripples spreading from the disturbance to the bank. We find ways to take up the spaces we occupy and some of us the ones we can dream. Perhaps Mandela is correct in saying that “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” I wonder. Not at the truth of his statement but at when or how I’ll see this play out. What happens if our strength fails? Is that the only obstacle preventing us from seeing our immeasurable power?

A sigh. I don’t have a rake. The last pass of the city leaf removal is happening soon, and I’m much too busy this afternoon to check the website.

We can sense that we’re powerful beyond measure and unsure of what we’re capable of. We’re the perennial underdogs who find a way to compete at whatever intensity Life matches us with. There’s no need to romanticize suffering here but an opportunity to honor human courage.