always leaving...
Tea cup...already broken
-Zen saying
The small u-haul is packed. Tomorrow Joe and I leave our home in Illinois for the final time and Colorado will be our permanent home. Several times a day this past month I am asked how I’m doing, what I’m feeling…and the truth is I’m feeling really good, a sweetness, a sense of completion, another amazing chapter of our lives closing.
Tea cup...already broken
This is how I felt when I retired from almost thirty years as a teacher, the close of an action-packed exciting chapter of my life. Every year without fail, near the end of the school year, usually after one of the kids made me laugh in class, and one of my seniors would call out, “Aren’t you going to miss us, Señora?” I would say, “No,” to dropped jaws and shocked faces. I then would add, “I knew the moment you walked into my classroom last fall that you weren’t staying...your were leaving...so I knew to enjoy every moment that we’ve been together.”
Tea cup...already broken
For 28 years, our small condo in Illinois witnessed so much of our lives, including the rich years of being educators, deep relationships that were both joy-filled and pain-filled, my journey with stage 4 breast cancer, Joe’s open heart surgery. This little condo itself was well loved, honored and celebrated...with amazing dishes coming out of a tiny kitchen, decorated throughout with the Navajo and Hopi pieces that keep us connected to the earth, a treasure trove of books that were also some of my teachers. We’ve given away almost everything...things we love to people we love. We walked Patrick around the lake just now for the last time and all I could feel was a sweet inner nod of a life here that was lived out loud, sloppily, beautifully...and completely.
Tea cup...already broken
I feel a delicious excitement about what is opening for me, that now we will be in Colorado throughout the year. My dreamwork practice is growing, I’m giving a public talk and doing dream workshops next month. This is where I now want my full presence, this is where I know I’ll be leaving next and when that chapter comes to a close I want to know that as with all the others, I will have lived it completely.
Tea cup...already broken
So...when I look at the tea cup, whether the tea cup is stepping into a classroom, having dinner with friends, feeling my feelings, doing my dream homework, being with a client, I know the tea cup is already broken...the moment is always leaving...I’m always leaving...and so I have known to savor the moment, not rush it, to be as fully present with it as I can. Reading this to Joe just now, I had to stop several times along the way as my voice cracked with such awe at what this little tea cup can hold.
Mary Jo Heyen
Archetypal Dreamwork Practitioner
Dream sessions in person, via Skype or on the phone