Emotions

Wednesday March 8, 2023

Home at TreeTops, our decades-old log cabin in the Monadnock region of New Hampshire

A week ago today was our first morning home after being away for 10 weeks.

December 19th I left to visit with loved ones in my family of origin in Australia. January 3rd, after Jamie spent Christmas with his family of origin in Cape Cod, he left to travel through India with one of our neighboring Buddhist monk friends. After 5 weeks apart, on Jan 25th, Jamie and I met up again at the Revolution Hotel in Boston—and yes, reunions are fun 💃🕺✨💕 and part of why I enjoyed the Revolution Hotel was also just because of its name 😁 Jan 27th we flew to Florida to spend a month facilitating repairs wrought by Hurricane Ian to my elderly in-law’s home on Captiva Island, which I write about in my February posts.

We arrived home to TreeTops around 8:30 pm Tuesday February 28th, just as our local plowing cooperative was finishing plowing snow from our steep driveway. Earlier in the day, we had remotely turned on our Mitsubishi heat pumps, so when we got inside our home was about 55F. But to help it get a little warmer, I lit a fire in our Jotul wood burning stove, while Jamie turned the house water back on. In December, he’d blown the pipes so that the frigid temperatures during the months of January and February when we weren’t there, wouldn’t have the chance to freeze the water inside the pipes, making them burst. Having grown up in Australia, I’m still intrigued by this, as we never had to even think about pipes bursting from frozen water.

Waking up on our first morning at home, it was as though my feet shot over the side of the bed and I remember thinking, “Thank you Mother Earth for the privilege of living on this sacred land.” When you’ve been away from a cherished space for more than two months, it’s amazing how much more you appreciate everything.

Even just walking into our kitchen lit me up. When we still lived in Greenwich Village and visited TreeTops for weekends, we spent six months renovating the kitchen so that it is now exactly as we love it. Creativity poured into a home is one of the best investments, as it keeps giving back.

I flicked on the switch and the burrrrrr of our coffee grinder hummed. Holding the porta-filter below the opening, I pulled the lever clack, clack, clack, releasing the fine coffee grinds. Scraping the flat side of a teaspoon over the porta-filter I pushed the surplus coffee back into the grinder, before tamping down the chocolate-colored heavenly-smelling magic dust. Locking the porta-filter into La Valentina (the espresso machine we bought when I turned 40) I pushed down the red on-off switch. She hummed to life and a stream of thick, brown crema the diameter of a mouse tail, poured into my cup; creating a pool of crema gold. Positioning the small stainless steel jug of whole milk under the steamer, I turned the dial, and a whoosh of air, micro-bubbles, and a scratchy hiss created the desired white foam. Pouring that luscious white frothy milk into the pool of crema, then adding a teaspoon of TreeTops Jamie-made maple syrup, created an alchemical mix of morning bliss.

You get the picture. I relished every moment of making myself a latte🤩

Jamie and I sat on our couch in front of the Jotul, sipping lattes and gazing at the orangey flames dancing behind the glass, before we ventured out to the bright blue, sunny sky and knee-deep snow. Jamie drove the ‘Beast’ (pictured below) down our steep driveway, planning to drive over to the Buddhist monastery across the road to plow the snow off their walking paths.

We stopped at our post box, at the bottom of our driveway hill, and I got out of the Beast to walk.

I wanted to pause, to be still, to admire the snow that piles up on each rock, that coats each twig on every tree; to feel the slip of snow beneath my boots; to greedily inhale the crispy clean and frosty air; to sense into the sacred energy of this land.

Continuing up the hill of our driveway, I paused at the place where we buried our two cats, Teddy who died in 2014 and Eleanor who died just last July. Anyone who has spent 10-18 years with a pet knows that feeling of loss of a beloved “guardian of being.” Their presence in our lives is a gift of pure, unconditional love. My eyes still fill with tears when I recall Eleanor’s last days with us. She was almost 18 years old, was in evident physical pain, and our vet recommended compassionate euthanasia. I had a sense Eleanor was doing her best to hold on until we were ready to let her go. And it was so hard to let her go.

At the vet clinic, I held her little paw and looked into her eyes as the vet gave her the shot. The life force left her sweet, darling little body. All four of us in the room cried: Jamie, the nurse, the vet and me.

That emotional pain, the grief of knowing her darling little physical form will no longer grace my life, still makes me cry.

But she has also given me a gift: an opportunity to investigate such a deep emotional pain, and in doing so, my fear of this kind of emotional pain has eased.

This pain, this grief, is an emotion that arises and passes. I can feel it and it won’t obliterate me. I am the conscious awareness behind the emotion. I can practice not being identified with it. “I am the sky, everything else is just the weather.”

I’ve learned I can feel the pain and let it go. The emotion arises and it passes. It’s only by clinging to the emotion, by identifying with it, that I cause myself to suffer.

I texted a friend recently, “Yes, knowing these spiritual principles is one thing, and then life will give you a TON of opportunities to put them into practice. You can even shift your mindset towards being grateful for the challenges in your life, as they give you an opportunity to practice this stuff ✨🌟💖🙏🕊️😘”

And yes, as always, it’s all easier said than done.

~

Last Friday night, to my delight, it snowed another 14”. On Saturday I went snow-shoeing on the monastery grounds across the road, where I saw this symbol:

I learned that it represents the word Buddho and I read:

“Let us recall the meaning and the beauty encaptured in the word 'Buddho'.

'Buddho' means: the one who knows, who is aware, who is fully awakened, who is radiant, blissful and at peace.”