Earthing

In a time between autumn and winter and in a state somewhere between acceptance and despair, Ada watched the early morning light silhouette the branches of a liquidambar tree. Raindrops shone silver like distant stars on the outer twigs. Magenta, orange and brown leaves flagged the sky, remembering summer. With a cup of hot water warming her time worn hands she sat at her kitchen table, sipping slowly. Tea towels hung drying with bunches of basil, oregano, sage, nettle and thyme. An old style combustion oven crackled and puffed smoke as the fire warmed. Life had changed radically for Ada and her husband Rollo after the global financial disaster of 2008. His acceptance of an early retirement package helped equip their house with sustainable power and water systems. A new lifetime of working together in the garden and orchard soon brought health and happiness. Those years had been some of the happiest of their long life together, blissfully happy until the most radical change of all; Rollo's death. She smiled as tiny blue wrens splashed and played in the overflow from last night's rain. Winter in the subtropics of Australia’s eastern seaboard was often troubled by water shortages but here at 'Happy Hill' huge storage tanks nourished luxurious gardens and filled many baths for tired bodies. As her morning coffee began to simmer on the hot plate, she remembered Rollo struggling to put 'the monster,' as he called it, into place. If it hadn't been for the help of the young people living in the old farm house next door he never would have managed to install it. Now they were gone, the classic farm house demolished and what remained of Rollo's wood heap was being used very carefully. She closed the flu to conserve fuel and moved the percolator aside. The cruel irony of life being somehow similar but yet so astoundingly different since his death was striking painfully. Oh how she missed his warm body, his smiling eyes, the stoop of his back and perhaps most of all, his contagious laughter. The past two years had been a slow and sad recovery to accepting reality. Rollo's cancer struck hard and fast, relentless to the end. Who could have guessed that within six months he would be gone from the physical world and his body contained in a small ceramic jar. "Ah my darling," she spoke with passion. "How is your astral world today? Is it cold in winter without your body or do you lie around on cosmic carpets of sun and starlight? Do you travel through time or are you nowhere or everywhere at once? Will you wait two or three decades if it takes me that long to get where you've gone or are you where you want to be, completely gone from this world? I still feel you so close, especially in autumn and winter. Am I a part of your world or is it just that you are a part of mine?" Attempting to suppress her reverie and the reality of her loneliness she rose and made coffee. Suddenly another possibility flashed to consciousness and she asked aloud, "Is this suffering because of my loss or is it sadness for you no longer enjoying life?” Returning to the table she collapsed, resting her head on folded arms. Lately it had seemed in this child-like surrendered position as if there was someone there to care for her and somehow it felt safe to let her feelings flow free. Minutes passed until whimpering and scratching at the back door meant the pup was back. Ada rose to let him in. "You crazy little pup! What manner of madness was it that inspired Annie to burden me with a bundle of trouble like you?" The pup’s big brown eyes looked quizzically at her for a moment before wagging its tail and prancing around her feet. Ada commanded him to sit and when he did she lovingly cradled him into her arms. "I think I'll call you Pup. I'm the boss around here and you are just going to have to watch me eat this pawpaw for breakfast before I feed you." She released him from his morning cuddle and he pounced on his op shop teddy bear. Ada took a pawpaw from the shelf where it sat with several unripe fruits. Hungry bats made sure that tree-ripened fruit disappeared quickly. Choosing the best fruit and leaving others as a sacrificial offering seemed a more harmonious existence than the random gun pellet firing one of her neighbours used to claim his kiwi fruit crop. He had brought her a bag of fruit last year when he called by to announce that now the noise disturbance would be used to replace poison used previously. Ada replied that perhaps she could compensate the disturbance to her peace with the knowledge that little pollinating creatures were no longer being cruelly poisoned. Wealthy and used to throwing his weight around he had shrugged his shoulders implying that it was his personal right to manage his crop however it suited him. For the sake of being a peaceful neighbour Ada restrained herself from insisting that a crop without heart wasn’t much good at all. He left uncertain that the noise of his random gun fire would not be publicly objected to by the eccentric elderly lady who lived in the hippie house over the hill. She had remained sitting at the table wondering if sharing or netting or sensor lighting or electronic frequency modulation might deter the bats, until the myriad of possible reactions to her new neighbour swamped her reality completely and she decided for the sake of peace to let go of judgement, to be patient and to accept the reality of things being the way they were. Now more than a year later...