Cardiff By The Sea—Tuesday, July 15
A buzzing…familiar from a lifetime of insect cohabiting…there was no doubt. Fly buzz is particular. With no specific feelings around flies, other than my India years hummed with, “Flies are filthy, flies are filthy”, hence I’d rather they buzz elsewhere.
My moment to catch the setting sun down by the ocean suddenly caught me, hence shuffle shuffle, close the windows and lock the doors, but there buzzed the frenzied wee being, trying to GET OUT but was obsessed with a certain window pane. Sigh. I shooed him/her with my hands…then a magazine…then I blew on him/her…stubborn fly. That window was the window of choice, but that one did not open…and he/she was getting tired, the buzzing low and gravelly.
I left.
The sky was overcast and the wind damp and chilly, and as immersed as I was sensorily, my mind…my mind…was now concerned with the fly.
Then.
From the mysterious depths, I flashed on my father’s last hurrah. Dad’s last 105 days on earth was on my turf. California was not his world, his friends and supporters were nowhere around, he had come out here for his birthday, a few months after Mom passed, and landed in the hospital in crisis. Every single day I was his…at his side.…but the truth was I had a pulsing upset so deep and real that it all felt like an act…I was wanting to run away every second. For all of these years I have dealt with, worked with, and attempted to heal my feelings of guilt for not being a hundred percent. But/and Dad’s journey was his. Period. We each play roles in other’s lives, paths overlap, the lessons are there, and ultimately it’s about respecting each other and ourselves.
Back to the fly. With this, I decided to accept the fly’s decision, thus freeing me to be present with the ocean and the wind.
PS…no sign of him/her when I returned home, but I thanked him/her wherever he/she was.