Photo by Bigstock.

Birthing

I work at Hastings Urban Farm, across from Save-On-Meats. I was hired as a

carpenter’s helper, yet do a lot of the gardening as well.

I have a history of working with plants and up until a couple of years ago, I lived

on a co-op farm in the valley. Then my life blew up and, after 20 years of being

away, I once again became a resident of the DTES.

One day, a few weeks ago, as I was hanging out with the plants, I noticed a

ladybug larva, kinda hunkered down with its mouth parts seemingly attached to

the leaf and its butt stuck up.

I picked the leaf and brought it closer so I could check out what was going

on. My heart almost stopped, I couldn’t rip my eyes away as I witnessed the

transformation from larva to ladybug – the rending of the capsule it had been

forming in and the backward entrance of beetle. She was translucent sea green.

Discarding lifeless, now purposeless, spent casing of larva to become one of our

most treasured and sought after beneficial insects in the world of organics and

poetry.

I think about the timing of things, some call it the quickening, when, if you’re

paying attention, life’s most surprising events will birth right before your eyes.

My whole existence in the past two and a half years has been oh so painfully

working towards my own rebirthing, from a suicidal, helpless, hopeless belief of

myself, to the moments that presented the time and place for me to sink my teeth

in, butt stuck up, a sense of cracking that belief, sloughing off my heart, to be

replaced with hope and joy and once again humour.

As my addiction sleeps, the timing of wondrous things appears. From violent

suicide attempts in the past, where I had been hospitalized for so long that I

had to learn to walk again, to the devastating circumstances of now, being in a

protected environment at the Rainier, with other women to help me along the

way. I, like the ladybug, morphed into a clearer, translucent spirit who accepts

the good things in life now with simplicity and an absolute cosmic sense of

humour. I can laugh because good is abundant and mostly good, if you’re paying

attention.

I now await for my colouring and spots, the next level of existence that calls me

home. Where do we go when we die? Is it possible we end up in the same place

we were before we were born? As E.E. Cummings said, “the most beautiful

answers ask the even more beautiful questions.”

bg participates in Megaphone’s community writing workshop at the

Rainier Hotel.