Over the…Beautiful Mountain

Is this what turning 40 feels like or should I be concerned?

The doctor laughed and said, “you’re doing fine.”

I trace a finger over the scars that bore my babies

The one made by the one we lost is longer and perpendicular; a cross

“Fitting” says my husband.

I don’t have any scars from childhood.

Childhood. It’s harder to remember now.

When did it stop feeling like yesterday?

I used to return to youthful places and morph right back

Until I didn’t

Maybe it was encountering grief that changed me the most

Getting scars in my heart for the first time

Joy and sorrow are bound together now,

The hue of one is the horizon for the other

There’s a homesickness that can never be appeased

But I wouldn’t go back, as much as the past may tempt me

I don’t look down on the young girl, she didn’t know what was coming

She didn’t know how love would change her

Or could it be becoming a parent that changed my whole world?

Having your heart walk around outside your chest, they say

Yeah, it’s like that

I remember lamenting the lack of zeal I witnessed in adults

I will never lose my fire I promised myself

That fire still burns but

Instead of lighting revolutions, it is warming meals

The ashes must have created fertile ground

But everything has a season

The season of burning has passed

Now I plant seeds in hope

The thrill of rollercoasters and travel has been replaced

By the delight of holding hands and sipping wine

By the peace of falling asleep listening to my child’s breathing

By the joy of hearing laughter in the bedroom and being pulled by the arm to come see a bug

By the awe of friendships that have grown deeper than canyons in the earth

Loss of parents, miscarriages, cancers, and worries have bonded us deeper than jumping rope and monkey bars.

But overall time has been the strongest sealant. Time

I put on a shirt that is 20 years old

I am jolted by the face that comes out that familiar collar

Decades have passed

I have stories to tell now

I remember when I thought I didn’t

Because I didn’t

But now…I have been to places far away

I have known people of all sorts

Decades have passed

I have watched babies grow into adults, a true miracle

The small circle of those who watched me from my beginning has gotten even smaller

Decades have passed

Astronomical events that rarely happen have happened

Many I have loved have passed into eternity now

I see them in the places I return

But I gasp when I have only walked into my memory

Who has not yet been added to my heart’s orbit?

The next decades will tell

What child will become family?

What friendship will be even deeper still?

Dreams and desires and hope will change like the seasons

I look towards the autumn, and this hill has a great view