Someday, My One Day Will Come

Haven’t I affirmed & had it affirmed for me lifelong… One day you will … One day I know I’ll be able to …

Well, hey, I’m past ready & one day has turned into 27,890 of them, give or take 50-60. Ok, Great Universe, I’m waiting! Yes, I have, too! I HAVE tried, I have declared… I claimed, I demanded, I surrendered, I laughed, I cried, I stamped my right foot & then my left one even harder. I swept the altar & scraped off the wax drippings, I’ve burned wagonloads of sage, palo santo, practically mainlined Rescue Remedy, I smoked sacred substances, I’ve entered the many mansions in my mind moving swiftly thru doorways, shouting “Clear” at every one as I rounded it with a lit candle & a crucifix.

I’ve learned very little is sacred when it comes to humans & for all my fly-in-the-jar buzzing, I am so. And I’ll say it again, I’m ready!

I know so few of those who believe they know me would even take a flying leap into what I’m about discussing this with the universe. I know this is because they are each on their own path, the drums repeating behind them.

Each day it comes clearer. The world isn’t going to admit to anything. It will say, ‘Haven’t I made you happy? Haven’t I been clear & blue & scarlet & fragrant & flowered & butterflied enough for you yet?’

No.

You don’t understand either!

And what will it accomplish to declare what I want now? Aren’t I doing some sweaty little dance off in the corner keeping time to my own heart?

My life hides in the wrinkles now. I get a little desperate now & then. I’m watching down the road for the bus that isn’t coming, that may have changed routes a decade ago while I balanced on the curb. Did the announcement come the one time I took my eyes away?

This world isn’t made to satisfy what I believe my desires to be. This world is a paean to dissatisfaction, to falling short in the moment. I no sooner say yes than someone nearby begins singing no no no no no. Those two letters trip over in eagerness to assert their negating power.

When I was a child, my mother had to go to a meeting when a nor’easter was coming in. The sky was dark, the wind whipping itself into a real blow, the rain becoming a personal affront to whatever one wore. The Atlantic crossed the four blocks of our tiny peninsular neighborhood. The bay crested over the bulwark traveling one block to meet it. They formed a widow’s peak in the parking lot next door, gleeful & super-charged, a discovery of elements & forces against which few had any control & certainly not my 4’5″ Mom breasting the current to Come Home. My brother & I watched her out the window, cheering her on – “Come on , MOM!” We stripped up the bathroom towels & raced to the second floor porch door as she tiredly emerged from the flood, both hands on the wooden railing. “Mom! Where’s the car?” we stupidly asked – she’d have needed a motorboat at that point. She pulled the towels from us, wiping her hands, her face, wrapping one around her soaked hair.

“How did you do at the meeting?” we chorused, “Mom! What happened?”

“He said no,” she tiredly replied. So her mission to reclaim the Grail of my brother’s reputation had failed & he would not be allowed to return to school for the three months before graduation, but would always bear the diploma of the known-to-be-inferior public school. The entire senior class would graduate with him from there.

Knowing what I know now, I would have known: The church existed to condemn, to pinch off mercy at any source, to draw a woman out into a force of nature to be admonished in person by a man in black, his Roman collar declaring his loyalty. Mom had no tithes to offer. no way to stay the storm.

She went into her bedroom; we hung up the towels. The storm blasted us all night & left a shambled neighborhood in its wake.

My life is only one of so many, all deadlocked in a “no.”

But here it is, Universe, I’m going to keep singing yes until I die & quite probably for some time afterward. I WILL find my way to Some Day. It may be the one before they bury me, but I will have mine.

I will sit in a shaft of winter sun, cozy & warmed clear through. I will write all my tomorrows & hide the book in the cedar chest in the attic where I will know them to be. I will watch for storms from the windows, a supernatural self in the fore, a preternatural force of the pen. I will write all day & my hand shall not grow tired. Food will appear nearby, & only my favorites & I’ll ignore it all to get what I have to say, said.

That Some Day is this One Day I have now!