Tuesday Morning 0930

I write this from the comfort of a house warmed with fire as the rains drizzles down outside.  It has drizzled down since around 0230 as I recall; the forecast calls for the same most of the day.

Today is an odd bonus day, the sort of day that only periodically appears:  unplanned, unexpected.  Back at The Ranch, I find myself with almost nothing on my calendar for the day:  some picture selections for the upcoming funeral, a visit with The Director this evening, cleaning for my early morning departure tomorrow.

I have consciously made a decision to temporarily halt any packing or additional moving activities, partially because we will return in about two months for the funeral (and more packing for Na Clann to take things home) and partially pending the settlement of the estate:  any move to rent the house now will wait pending final settlement.  And if we are not going to sell the house, keeping some of the furniture that we might have gotten rid of makes perfectly good sense.  

It also represents a sort of last moment:  after this, all trips here will originate from New Home 2.0, not New Home.  The locus of all originations and returns shifts.

This is now third Spring since my parents left, but life here know nothing of the ultimate arrival and departure of humans.  The cattle slowly move through drizzle, eventually ending up under the cover of trees.  The turkey flock that was in the Upper Meadow this morning migrated back into the forest, their daily rounds curtailed by the wet.  The jack rabbit I surprised in the front of the house this morning fled to the back of the house and down the slope, black tipped ears erect.

The plants, too, are in their awakening mode.  The daffodils so beloved by my mother have erected their heads and are blooming, weighted down this morning by rain drops; behind them the poppies have begun their climb to glory.  The Meadows are themselves turning green as this year's new growth slowly overtops the remaining stems from last year.  The irises, remnants from my maternal grandmother's garden, stand with their leaves sword-straight, waiting for their turn to shine in the sun.

The mist obscures the mountains beyond but they, too, register little of the mortal lives of humans.

I have written before that one of the things that marks a transition between immaturity and maturity is the realization of kairos, those specific called out moments of time which were originally "the right or critical moment" versus chronos, the simple passing of time.  A useful distinction, that: as with many things, Ancient peoples had a way with things that we moderns lack.  

When we are young our world seems to be filled with chronos moments, the passage of time that seems to go on and on. At some point - early for some, later for others - we realize that things end and we had not been conscious of that ending.  Certainly, we recognize some things:  the graduation from our various stages of education, the beginning of a married life (or the end of it), the birth of child, the death of our parents.  But these are hardly the sum total of all the chronos moments:  they exist far more often than we think, often only caught out of our eye as they pass (if we are lucky) or in the rearview mirror of life as we realized the last time we did X or saw Y was many years ago.

This - this day, this time, I suddenly realize - is such a moment.

It is of course not "a moment"; there are still things that need to be done and events that need to occur.  But this time, this day or even series of days and weeks even to the end of the year, represents multiple transition points.  It is the beginning of a change for the ownership of this place and this land, of the assuming of responsibilities and active management in a way I have not done before.  It is the beginning of a new job (well, in less than a week) and the beginning of a new locus of focus in my own life, as New Home 2.0 becomes "home" and New Home becomes a place I have a house and where some of Na Clann and The Ravishing Mrs. TB dwell (for now).  

In a way - even though in some ways this has been true for the last three years - this is the beginning of my life with almost of all of my parent's generation gone in my family. In the cycle of life, we have now assumed the position that they, in turn, inherited from their parents.  

I remember that transition for them.  I can scarcely think of a time I realized the burden would fall to us.

I realize with a start as I write this (12 March), is is birthday of my father.  He has been gone almost two years now.  That seems like forever and yet no time at all.  The moment he left was kairos, the time after has been chronos.  The difference has suddenly never been clearer in my mind.

Sighing, I look outside.  The rain has slowed to a fine mist, a sort of falling haze seems almost as timeliness as this moment, a continuous motion machine as the drops hit the earth and flow down the sidewalk or stems and into the grasses or streams below.  Heaven and Earth seemed joined for a moment in a sheen in which can only detect motion if one closely examines it.

The fire quietly sighs and pops, a reminder of the passing of all things.