Just thinking and rambling

I was thinking about my niece, how unstable life must seem to her. And I was thinking about my poem, about life being a shifting mess and being my own security, my own Tara and about wanting to be a Tara to others. I try to be that for her. But my years are numbered. The number may be 80, it may be 32.

As unsteady as things must seem to her right now, she basically has 3 parents that will always love her. That got me thinking about her home. A home that will be there all her life, no matter where she lives. Dad has land that he has already put partly in my sisters name and mine. Some day it will be in hers and her sisters names. I never thought about that till just now, that someday they will share that land like my sister and I will. I hope they respect each other’s wishes and respect that land as much as we do.

I guess it’s lucky that I probably wont have kids. Sharing that land between two could already be complicated enough. But, I was glad to know that she will have her own little Tara, even after we are all dead and gone. My love for her will always be there, because there is no place more me than that land, despite the fact that I rarely make time to go there. Both of her great-grandmother’s ashes are a part of the trees there now, reborn from human to nature… feeding the trees that grow there. Her grandmother (my mother) is a part of the dogwoods and sassafras alike. When I die, I will be food for this warm earth myself. Our remnants of our lives, once we have spent the bulk of them on living, will be passed on to the very land that grows and produces for us now.

I need to teach her about land and caring for it, and what it means and about never carving it up to sell to developers and the like. But then, she is made of us, and she sprouts up among a forest of people, this family, who respect the land. She is also a bright young thing who never wastes a bit of light that shines on her. She will no doubt learn the lessons we have to teach on that subject simply by growing among us.

I still worry about what her attitude on love will be, since the examples she has seen have been unsteady and full of pain. But the love she has gotten from us is unwavering. Hopefully that will give her the strength to live her life, and not hide from love. Hopefully she will also have better experiences that ours.

Then, somewhere past hope is faith… I am not a person full of faith in people, even those I love. But I have faith that Stephen, whom has been slow to enter her life, will be even slower to leave it. His appearance in her forest has been like a slow growing tree. The trees that grow the slowest are generally the strongest. When he loves me, he gives me strength. That love is an example. Even if for no other reason that the fact that the strength he gives me is visible.

I thank God that she has me, her parents, and that land. Her life may seem utter chaos to her right now, but no matter how fierce a storm her tiny branches weather right now, the soil at her feet will nurture her. We give all we have at her roots, despite tumultuous skies. She will grow strong, I believe.
She will be an amazing person. I know that because she already is.