Cage Free Family

Something so comforting about a nighttime fire rolling and crackling...

*snap *crackle *pop

The only light coming from the orange red coals and the leaping blue, yellow flames licking the air. The embers are so hot that the fresh logs catch immediately; sparking and jumping to life... the most faint scent of pine and smoke as they catch and I replace the screen against the tiny, floating, orange stars sailing up the chimney.

The rain outside has been steady for the past two days. The clouds covering the sky and creating a steely, blue light through the windows, but the green of the forest and the red of the wet stacks of wood is enhanced, brightened... rich now. I stand in the door looking out at the mountains so that I can feel the contrast of fire warmth and cold, wet air. The bite of the breeze makes me feel more alive and I take in a deep breath of this wetness, trying to invite the feeling inside myself.

The slow roll of the gray clouds and the steady soaking of the rain mimic my feeling... I am not having a sun-shiny week and am grateful when the outside world looks as I feel.

I'm working through another layer of myself. Cleaning the corners of my self is not as fast or simple as the emptying of my house was. As I create a cozy nest of a home; carefully choosing each piece: it must be worthy, beautiful, but mostly it must matter each day. No useless thing to cross into our sacred space. No thing to take our time, our attention, our dollars that is not paying back on a daily basis. Creating comfort without excess and I realize that we already have all that we need... anything else is fluff, and I am contented in this.

I focus again on the orange fire light in the blackness of the room... no moon through the clouds tonight... and I hear the sweet sing-song-y babble of our little girl off in the dark as she fights sleep and undoubtedly frustrates her daddy and sleepy brother. So young, so happy, so perfectly, wonderfully oblivious to the storm in her mama, or even outside.

Neeeeeeeeka-aaa-aa, Quinn groans
and Neeka sings: I-I-I am a little girl...daaaaddy and Quiiiiinnnnn are sleeeeping...

My internal cleaning has moved into my deeper, more shadowy spaces... the basement corners and creepy crawlspaces that store the things that were meant to be forgotten there, but there is a momentum to my changing that cannot be stopped. I'm in these places now, tripping on things in the dark... scraping my shins, cursing, mostly still trying to find the door.
But I'm gaining strength, power... a bit of a growl deep in my chest...
I'm getting ready to empty these spaces... to throw open the shutters and let the light show all the trash for what it is... no distorting shadows, nothing scary... just junk. Old, old junk that I let someone else put there. I'm understanding that it isn't mine. That I can simply check it for usability and toss it.

Such dusty, sweaty work while everything in life goes on around me.
My body taking the shape of the full moon, belly in the way, making the work slower, harder... but driving it as well... get this cleaned up before...

In a short time something more will come of me than just a new being... something more along the lines of two new beings...one tiny and new... one resembling me, only stronger, wiser, lighter and more real than before... with more space, more love, and more of me to share with the three that have come from me.

The house is silent now, 'cept the darker, slower fire... Neeka having made her way to my shoulder to fall asleep, and Jeff and Quinn quietly snoring in the more distant darkness now that she is here.

A break for myself tonight... something meaningful accomplished... to be celebrated with a steamy cup of tea while I watch the fire die out.

I'm still here.