By Catherine DiMercurio
My blog pace has slowed somewhat in recent weeks, which happens when I’m deep into processing new things or big things or sometimes, recurring things. But occasionally, life offers a little sidestep, a time and place away from the rush of everyday life to think, or not to think.
Last weekend, the weekend of the autumnal equinox, my sister and I took a camping trip to Michigan’s Leelenau Peninsula. We were anticipating a cool fall weekend, but it ended up being more like summer. Michigan loves to play those kinds of games. We weren’t complaining. The nights and mornings were chilly enough for campfires and sweaters, while the warm, sunny days had us wading, or dunking ourselves, in Lake Michigan.
I have three sisters and a brother, and I wish I could take a solo trip with each of them, but this trip was for me and the sister closest to me in age; we are 14 months apart. We shared a room our whole lives, until we left for college. Our high school boyfriends were best friends. People often thought we were twins. This is all to say, we’ve always been close.
Well, not strictly always. I mean, it was always there underneath, but we have ebbed and flowed with our life events, as people do. But we always find a way to return to each other. I wish life made it easier. But I love that we made it happen for these brief days near September’s close.
We had a beautiful campsite, a literal stone’s throw from Lake Michigan. A cluster of cedars demarcated the perfect place for our tent. We’d set up camp to our liking and made dinner. As we sat down to eat, someone ran by the campsite warning of a storm blowing through in nearby Northport. We could look out over the water and see it brewing. So we threw what we could back into the car, and hurriedly threw up some tarps over the tent as an added layer of protection, though, I’d just re-waterproofed it, but still. No one likes a soggy tent. We could feel how quickly the weather was changing and though we finished before it did more than sprinkle, it had turned into a “team building” exercise. Did we occasionally squabble? Of course. But with my sister, these things melt away. I’m glad things still melt away.
One of the things I’ve come to understand after a couple of years being single is that I’ve been prone to deprioritize lots of other relationships when I’m in a romantic relationship. These last couple of years, I’ve made an effort to refocus on friendships and family connections that I found hard to attend to while I was in the midst of past relationships. As I’m [suddenly and surprisingly] embarking on something brand new, one of the promises I make to myself is that I’ll do better this time. I will pursue balance. I won’t let go of so many things that are important to me as I’ve done in the past. The amazing part is that I’ve already talked about this with the new person in my life. What I mean is that I’m amazed that I am comfortable enough now with myself to have conversations I would have previously avoided, and that me being me is already so well received.
I was grateful, on this camping trip, to find the close bond with my sister was at the ready, not rusty or eroded, despite the toll of the past few years, the events in our lives, Covid, etc. What I wanted to offer was the same thing I seek in my own close relationships: a safe place.
The best relationships—family, friend, romantic—provide this, but not only safety as in, a place free from harm, though that is the cornerstone of any healthy relationship. But also, safety, as in, a place to grow. A place to be supported, a place to nurture dreams, a place to push that border between peaceful comfort and sometimes painful progress. Because let’s face it, growth is often uncomfortable.
As a parent, I remember thinking some mornings that my children grew measurably overnight. I would be standing in the kitchen making lunches, and morning hugs with the kiddos would suggest limbs and torsos newly stretched. The sleep tousled hair on their sweet noggins was somehow nearer my chin. You grew. You keep doing that. This sudden gain of a centimeter was accompanied by aches and pains, and a new but short-lived clumsiness as their brains tried to catch up with their bodies. So much non-physical growth is like that too. We often feel off-balance as we try to catch up to what our inner-selves are doing, how they are adapting to changing circumstances.
I think this is why, as I’ve started dating someone, I feel a discomfort that has nothing to do with this kind, smart, and earnest man who wants to spend time with me. With him, I feel at ease. In the in-between times, there are all sorts of recalibrations happening within me. Some of it is the anxiety I’ve always lived with. Some of it is the what-iffing that is completely natural when entering into something new. But beyond that, it’s as if I’ve been trying to solve an equation without enough information, and with each of our interactions, I’m given the quantity of one of the countless variables, so the figuring begins anew. (Math people – forgive what is likely a faulty metaphor!) This is the self-protective part of me, and I am watching her evolve and adapt. (Initially, she wanted nothing to do with meeting anyone new, but the curious part of myself and the self-protective part negotiated.) She enumerates the ways closeness has yielded loss in the past. And, there is this frantic figuring. Solving, or trying to, exactly how things will go, and what will happen, and how we can magically be prepared for it all.
It is hard to find the right way to explain to her that sometimes safety is in the action of leaving, rather than hunkering down. Whether it is leaving a bad situation or leaving one’s comfort zone to explore a new situation that has good written all over it, leaving is sometimes the way we move toward growth. It is not the safety of stillness (though this too has its season and should never be undervalued); it is the safety of becoming more and more ourselves, of embracing the strength this movement and growth entails. It is the safety of balance, in a way, of learning how to regain it when the unknown happens, when we move toward or away from something and stumble.
As my sister and I hunched over the rocky shoreline near our campsite, pecking around for pretty stones, we talked. About heavy things and about light things. I watched the way she sought out round, flat stones, the way she stacked them in little cairns everywhere we went. We visited several beaches, and she left these in her wake everywhere we went. I could see in them the precision and care that has always been part of her character, the artistry in both the selection of stones and their deliberate placement, their balancing. I could see the way this activity both calmed and delighted her. I loved the way we were able to fashion for ourselves this time in which to be calmed and delighted near each other, by each other.
The way the campground is situated at the tip of the peninsula meant that we had the perfect view of both sunrise and sunset, partially over the water, and partially over the rocky shoreline. I think about that now, this perfect positioning, this sense of being precisely between one thing and another. Certainly, it means something different for everyone who finds themselves there. For me it was a vantage point, from which to consider what’s next, as I move between the safety of stillness toward the safety of growth, even though I know I can never solve for all the variables.
Love, Cath
Chronicles of the Open Hearted 