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.
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