Dear Body

Dear Body,

I feel awkward and a little bit sheepish as I write, given how joined we always are and how simultaneously out of touch I feel with you. How could both be true?

And in my sheepishness, I realize how inferior I feel to you. Younger. Far more insecure. I have long assumed that I am your superior, that the mind is the Majors, somehow, while the body more like Little League: awkward, endearing, maddening sometimes, but with the right coaching, pliable, and readily led.

But from where I sit tonight, you hold far more weight. And I don’t mean physically, either. Day after day after day, you show up. You keep housing me. You keep working to heal when I hurt and ignore and neglect you. You stay in communication, too. I don’t always understand what you say, but your languages keep coming: pleasure, pain, desire, fear, frustration.

Your constancy feels ancient, somehow, and more weighted and settled than the fits and flights I know throughout my days.

I see and feel you aging, and recognize your growing limitations, but these don’t touch the constancy that moves me so right now. You are a clear, crisp story arch, moving from birth toward death without deviation. I am a thousand plots and rabbit trails.

And I look at you tonight, and feel as if I’m coming home. As if home has never left me, really, but has been holding me, enfolding me forever. I’m floored! The luck I feel! And not related to your looks. Your presence is my joy right now. The unutterable aloneness Rilke writes about cannot touch me when you’re here.

I look at my hands - your hands - and wonder at them being the same ones I had in infancy, the ones I used to cut and paste and paint and draw and play hours upon hours of music in childhood, the same ones that wrote papers in college and grad school, that typed a novel and cradled babies, and now hold chickens, of all things. Chickens and their warm, brown eggs.

I could say the same of all your parts: they’ve housed and worked alongside me since before the day this “I” was born.

So here you are. Here we are. Huge, lop-sided history between us. And all I want to do is thank you and try to honor you the way you’ve honored me. To live up to all you’ve done.

I had thoughts of talking with you today about your height, your skin, your breasts, your knees. But the details seem irrelevant right now. Conversations for another day.

I assumed, too, that there would be apologies to make and frustrations to air, and that you would have bones to pick with me, too. But honestly, wonder is the biggest thing I feel toward you. Gladness, too, in your friendship. In your constancy and “weight”.

And maybe the biggest gift of all in this is feeling you loving me. Feeling you turning toward me, like a turn into a hug.

The wonder...

I love you.

*****

Kristin Noelle is a writer and illustrator. Her blog, Trust Tending, uses music, words, and art to nourish Life beyond fear. This month, her theme there is Bodies. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her husband, young kids, and five chickens.

Comments

[Kristin Noelle]

Thank you so much for having me here! It's an honor and a joy to join your trust-tending work!

[Lindsey]

This is simply stunning.
Thank you both. xox

[Tammy]

Yes...My body is home...love this.
Thank you.

[melissa]

thank you for this invitation to craft a conversation with my body, my home. it is an honor to have you in the village.