What’s it all about? I ask myself in smiling silence. It is Thursday and my house is dirty. The house cleaner comes in on Fridays. Today I have a knitting class. On Thursday afternoons a mass of women comes to my home to sit around the dining table and learn how to knit. In the morning I tidy up, clean the table with a rag, set it up with the appropriate magazines, needles and threads. These classes work so well, are so joyful, playful and sweet. My students enrich it with stories told and shared. It is for me always a session full of fun. Even I learn that I can teach knitting but always I must give them the time and space to be themselves, to learn at their own pace.
What’s it all about? I ask myself on Wednesdays as I trek off to Calamba to tidy up my house, Lily Pad. I wrote about selling it but I am disappointed at the response. One person wanted to see it and at the last minute cancelled. Another person wanted to look at it, but then he probably forgot. It takes time to sell a house, I am told. I know. Until it is sold, I will come here once a week to tidy up, to empty the closets, to add my presence. Maybe one day I will sleep here again. What else is there to do? Would that not be great?
I told myself I would sell the house so I can be with my mother who is not doing so well in Vancouver. I had hoped I could sell it and leave by April 15 but it looks like that won’t be so. In the meantime I must set that plan aside – sell the house, go to a writing workshop, find an agent, write a book, sell it there – and check out my options here. I am at that stage when I must do everything to see what works, to understand what is meant for me to do, to be open and available for everything.
So in the meantime I go to Lily Pad and pack up my clothes, choosing which ones to sell, which ones to keep, wondering, how did I acquire so many? What was I thinking? That I would live that way forever? Did I really have to get so dressed and made up daily? My God, what for?
What’s it all about? I wonder as I teach writing to this present batch of students. We are in the fifth session. Their voices are changing, they are writing better and better each time. I must give them their graduation assignment, which they might work on over next week, Holy Week. They might bring it to the beach.
How beautiful to watch my students come out of their individual shells. How great to know that later one of the things that will change for them is their lives. I am proud that I was part of the process of illumination. I think people take my course and just around the fourth session, someone turns on a light bulb inside them. Ting! Their life changes in various directions, directions they choose. It begins with tiny steps but eventually the progress is remarkable.
What’s it all about? I find myself pondering that question as I become aware quite suddenly that I am staring into space. Life flows from day to day. I wake up very early to play solitaire on my computer. Then I write my Morning Pages, three pages of something, anything, whatever. I almost always feel alive, joyful, when I don’t, I know it will pass anyway. Then I go water my flowers in my little garden.
Life’s big picture is so uncertain these days. I don’t know what will happen next though I am sure something definitely will. I don’t know when but I know it will change for the better. Already it has been changing. People have been calling for classes in knitting or writing. I have been elected to the Board of Directors of the AIM Alumni Association again. I call my mother up once a week to talk to her, to see how she’s holding up on the other side of the world without me, her only child. She seems to be doing well. I wait still for the single caller about my house, the one who will buy it. That’s the big life. Until it happens I do the little things, live the little life but happily, as happily as I can.
That’s our story, isn’t it? We get up and ask ourselves – what’s it all about? And one day, quite suddenly, quite abruptly, we will know.