The Empty Nest Diary

Kelly Salasin, 2013, all rights reserved

“I can’t wait for Christmas!” my 15 year old says.  “How about you, Mom?”

I pause to consider.

“I can wait,” I say. “Christmas is as much the preparations for me.”

Then I laugh at myself. If this is true, why do I agonize over the preparations, and take joy on Christmas Day?

Labor and birth come to mind, and pregnancy. Perhaps suffering the preparation, even if its treasured, isn’t so absurd.

How then might I be gentler with myself in this knowing? (And how about others, do they deserve less of my griping too?)

My mind flashes to a classic birth scene–a screaming woman, a tightly gripped hand, the accusation: “You did this to me!”

I wonder what Mary had to say to God.

I think about her son. Reluctant to help out at a large family gathering, even with the smallest of…

I found these words scribbled on the front of a magazine from 1999.
I was a new mother. Full of fear. In the garden. With the rain.

Poetry Notes, 1999

Sunday evening
When the sky was still filled with light,
And the rain had softened to a mist,
I went out to the garden to weed.

At first tentative,
With spade and trowel,
Bending and squatting:
There was the garden–And
there was Me.

But through the hours
Of sweat and fatigue, and the fear
Of leaving children motherless,
I entered the Garden.

I knelt in the soil,
Cupped dirt with my hands,
Shaped mounds
Around each
New plant.

The puddles, christened
Me, with mud, until
I surrendered
My separation.

Dirty
I became the Dirt
And the dirt became Me
And in this Homecoming,
the fear of death drained from my bones.

I was the joy of the Universe
Expanding, Alive