Reach (Hope Writers 2020 Writing Challenge)

This week I took part in the Hope Writers 2020 Re-imagine Writing Challenge. I managed to respond to all but one of the prompts, and I'm posting them here if you want to read or share them.

I've been watching Spring arrive all around me as we've sheltered in place. While Nature thumbs her nose at "social distancing" (just ask the robins who built their nest above my back door), she's pretty good at sheltering in place. That's what Nature does best in the winter. Bears hibernate, flowers retreat, trees shed their leaves, everything pares back to the basest of needs to reserve their strength and restore themselves. Nature shelters in preparation for Spring.

And Spring is beautiful. I am always delighted by the first shoots of green and the tiny buds that quietly announce the turn in the weather. It is beautiful to watch.

It is painful to DO. 

imagine the roots underground as they begin to stretch out of their comfortable sleep and reach, against gravity, toward the surface. Once those little roots get to the boundary of the soil they have to then break through. Then they have to weather fluctuating temperatures. We always paint Spring in pastel colors and think of tender, sweet things. It is a season of hope, when potential is actually tangible. I think of Spring as frail.

But Spring is a Badass!

It's an entire season of stretching, opening up and reaching. When I set about stretching in the morning, I know I"m going to have to face the pains and quirks in my body. When I open up, there is risk. And reaching...

Reach is a complex word, it means both the journey and the destination. It's the work, the effort and the discipline to move toward a goal.

Also, it is actually arriving AT that goal. 

It hardly seems fair that one word can mean both things. I mean, the emotions are so different. The day to day of putting one foot in front of the other and finding the stamina to continue versus the celebration of the final arrival. 

Maybe that's the hope here. In every hard won "put one foot in front of the other" there is a drop of celebration. When I survive an honest and vulnerable conversation, there is a pre-echo of the dance I'll do at the end of the journey.

Here's to learning how to enjoy the reaching until we reach it.

~Karlie