Writing > Righting
It's hard to get to a space where the words flow out - like wine from the upside-down spilling crown gullet of Cassiopeia.
I long for fireside notebook sessions, where I can just write everything down and slow the pace and hear the hot centre fire-snap-pop. I want my hand to cramp from the feeling and passion and the momentary driven wavebreak.
But those aren't things in my wheelhouse these days. I forge the path of parenthood, and my schedule and my time revolve around my partner and a tiny being that has come into our lives.
Lately, she's been climbing the stairs of the house - from the bottom, all the way to the tippety top. It's bizarre to think that children were a far notion from my freewheeling bachelor mind, even two and a bit years ago. And now, I am moving into a new phase of hurdles and struggles and mountaintops and valleys. My universe has shifted, and is shifting.
It's daunting as I watch her, because our stairs are open underneath. And at times, I want to pick her up or at least form a safety net the entire time, but she senses it when I do that. And often, she'll turn on the second last step and want me to grab her - even though she's capable of finishing.
It's as close as we can get to having a godlike feeling in this life. Because we know that, as adults, someone did that for us at one point. Someone watched over us.
But it also begs more metaphysical questions like 'am I being watched, now?' or 'is someone caring for my ultimate best as I do the same for this tiny nugget of humanity?'
The answers are not that simple - but we trek on. Towards all of it.
The stairs and the stars.