MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Her Heart Knows the Way
"You have seen my descent, now watch my rising." Rumi.
My 11-year old daughter swings the car door open, leaps in and greets me with “hello adventure Mum!” She makes me laugh. She has been at her Dad’s house all weekend and we catch up on what’s been happening for her.
She asks after my weekend, I tell her about my 7-hour solo hike across the Cathedral Ranges, the 60kms of riding in the hills and a 30km recovery ride afterwards. And then there’s a work day thrown in, and before picking her up I smashed out 100kms on the bike.
Just because it was my day off. Who wants to do housework right?
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.