Craving Calm

My thoughts are bouncing all over the place.
I can't settle on one and work through it completely without bouncing to the next thing.
Or I don't want to go there thoroughly with one thing because the thought makes me tired
So I move on to the next.
I ask myself if there is anything I really want to share with the world
Or if I am better off just keeping it all to myself.
But it's not feeling good all bottled up inside me
So maybe if I start writing it will all come out
And some of it will start to make sense.

Yesterday my grandmother died.
Since her anurism and fall almost 7 years ago I think I have been preparing for her passing,
Feeling the loss of her a little more with each year she continued to live,
Never quite the same person externally that I had known before.
Now that she's passed, it's as if she has already been gone a long time
Because already I lost a part of her - the part I knew so deeply - years ago.

Today another sweet baby with CDH came home just a month after he was born,
Needing only a feeding tube and no breathing support.
I am filled with joy for them
And so triggered still by
Why not Tikva?
Of course I am happy for him and his family.
Of course it hurts.

A few days ago I found out that our future is unclear... again.
Changes afoot at Dave's rabbinical school because of the financial crisis that is enveloping our country (and beyond)
And clarity isn't going to come for a few months,
And it may mean... who knows?
It's making planning challenging
Again.
Damn plans...
Every time I slip into a sense of believing I can plan just a little,
Every time I start to get organized around a new idea of movement in a new direction,
BAM! Not too fast, Gal. Don't think you're going to get away with stability that easily.
Damn plans.

Don't they know how much I need a few years off from complication?
Hasn't anyone heard my call for calm?
Have I not put out the desire for a peaceful life on a Hawaiian island clearly enough?
You know, living most of my days barefoot with my feet in the sand,
Like for the rest of my life?

Even though I've lived most of my 37+ years of life with instability,
Instability scares the crap out of me.
It makes me uneasy, unsettled.
It makes me feel tired, like, Oh no, not again. Please not again.

I'm just past the part of my life where I want excitement.
I did that.
I traveled Europe and Israel for 7 months by myself at age 23.
I went to Burning Man four years in a row.
I stayed up all night dancing at raves.
I left my stable job at age 28 unsure what I would do next and started a consulting business that I had for 9 years.
I traveled throughout Turkey for a month when I was pregnant with Dahlia.
I took my 6 month old daughter to the Rainbow Gathering in the middle of the wilderness.
I did all that. I'm done with excitement.
Now I just want some calm.

Calm and steady and sure and predictable and simple and easy.
Throw in a little boring while you're at it.
How much clearer need I be?

And yet I am still so much calmer through it all than I have been in the past.
I still approach it for the most part with grace.
I know that I am still strong and that I will get through it intact,
That none of it is bigger than the experience of losing Tikva.
That I can handle it all.
I know all that, but it still makes me tired.

In my next life, I am going to be a cat,
A very spoiled domesticated cat in a household with no children and no other pets.
I will be the princess, spoiled and pampered and adored.
And all I will do all day is lie in the sun and nap.
That's all.
I will need about 17 years of a really easy life after this lifetime's hard work.
Then I can take on another big growing lifetime.
After one lifetime off.

For now, I dream of quiet except the sound of lapping waves
And a warm breeze across my body
As I doze on a hammock
Between two palm trees...
That'll be my happy place tonight when I turn off the light.