I am talking with my husband, prioritizing the “to do” list with him when I notice that my chest feels tight, as if a band of metal were surrounding me and slowly tightening. My throat feels thick and sluggish. My lower back feels spiky. I put voice to some of these body sensations and the tears well up behind my eyes. I tell my husband that I’m going to go walk the labyrinth.
As I head towards it (past some of the “honey do” things which precipitated the conversation), noticing the weight that I had previously felt on my shoulders start to lift. I pause at the entrance, standing on the heart-shaped stone that marks the beginning of the journey, take in a big breath, and start walking.
My pace is quick and jerky feeling. I notice the same feeling of slight irritation at the switchback at the center of the maiden spiral that I always feel, and keep walking. My feet are sliding around in my shoes. I don’t like that sensation, but I choose not to do anything about it. That’s a very familiar pattern. Noticing that I don’t like something, but being unwilling to change. In that moment, I choose to stoop over, move that big rock that has been bugging me, adjusting a few rocks around it, and feel a sigh ripple through my body. I wonder quietly to myself how different it will feel on the way back out.
I get to the center, spin around and head back out, determined to figure out what the name of the plant that grows in the center is. As I notice the “determination” I notice that my pace slows down. I breathe more deeply, pausing to run my fingers through the fragrant unnamed plant and quickly bring my fingers to my nose, remembering that its scent is incredibly fleeting. My pace is getting slower and slower. My determination to “figure out the name” is forgotten and delight, quiet delight in the scents and sights of the labyrinth take over. I’m noticing now, as I write this that I was not aware of sound while in the labyrinth this afternoon. Interesting.
My head is clearer, my pace is less frenetic, and the tears have passed on through. I can still feel an edge of as yet unexpressed something in my body, but it also doesn’t feel ripe. I’ve never noticed that before, that my emotions can feel ripe. In fact, that’s usually the way I experience them, almost overly ripe. Bursting out the way the warm juice from a peach will squirt out as I bite into it.
I feel like an unripe peach in this moment. Firm, barely perceptible, yet delectable scent, the promise of ripeness to come.
I’ve been watching other people “become ripe” in different settings and wondered at my not quite ripeness, though I wasn’t thinking of it in those terms. Right now, I’m content to be an unripe peach. I’ll be ripe soon enough.
Smiling quietly to myself, thinking of myself as a peach. I like that image.
