Find the gap. There it is. Heart open. Flooding my Self with Me. It’s only ever been me. I am what is. Flood with Love. I am Love. It’s only ever been me.
My thoughts drop away like sap in the old pine tree.
There were three pine trees planted in a row along the backyard perimeter between our property and the neighbors who lived behind us, whose property sidled up next to ours. On the other side of those pines looking over into their back lawn was a very large animal pen. It was long after I was repeatedly assured, and long after we had moved away from that house when I was 15, that I looked back to understand and finally accept that the animal who lived back there in that very large cage, and who was often running around free in the yard, was not a pony but was, in fact, a larger than life Great Dane dog. As a little girl I was never too big for my daddy to carry me around and lift me up and into wherever I needed to go. So through my Lilliputian life perspective, that animal next door was definitely a horse, and since horses were not to be approached without adult supervision, I was always on-alert while playing in our vast backyard arena.
Behold the three pine trees. It was obvious to me and my brother Nathan that no horse could possibly get to us if we were anywhere inside the protection of the pine trees’ branches. We could barely get to ourselves inside those branches’ hold! The carpet of needles blanketing the ground beneath the behemoth body of three was a century-thick of plushness. Being the thinker ahead of such awful potential tragedies as I was, I surmised a safe landing would be ours if either of us should calamitously fall from our perches high in the trees’ embrace, assuming we could somehow first gracefully fall down through the jigsawed branches we had so carefully climbed up. Our perched positions lacked nothing our imaginations could not create in real-time. Watching the whereabouts of the not-a-pony on the prowl was evident from the sticky tracks our fingers’ binoculars imprinted around the perimeters of our eyes. Shouting “Land-ho!” from the crow’s nest of the pines signaled the re-caging of the not-a-horse next door and our day’s journey’s end as we retraced our sappy steps down the mast and trudged back home for supper.
Always shockingly to me, the one person who consistently lacked all appreciation for our careful planning, considerations, executions, and possible consequences of aforementioned actions was our mother. Every single time (and these times were many) we navigated our way up and down the pine trees’ branches and adventured our way back home at the end of a long day escaping the never-imminent threat of a horse that wasn’t a horse, she (our mother) was displeased. “SAP!” was her complaint that landed on deaf ears as we dove deep into our pockets full of pine needles, pulling out our spoils of battle we carried home, hearts open, flooded with the love of Self, the stickiness on the ends of those needles reminding me that I am stuck to the creation of another adventure tomorrow. I created the adventure of life I truly lived today. My pine-scented pillowcase, the welcome recipient of my hair’s lingering memories, cradles my head in its plushness, as my thoughts drop away like sap in the old pine trees.