The waters of life
Although not intentional, I can’t help but smile at the fact I ended up in a pool of water on my birthday at the exact same time of my birth — 7:48pm. A solstice, a full moon and my birthday packaged in one.
I also began my day enjoying a traditional tea ceremony, which again is about water.
We start in a pool of fluid in the womb and it is water and her fluids that sustains life. Without it, we don’t function.
The week leading up to my birthday showed me just how important it is to life. My dad was bleeding to death and I went to Melbourne on an emergency dash.
There I experienced a deep appreciation for those who give blood. I was never able to, but I bow down to those who do. To share blood is to share life. It saved my dad’s last week.
Water also represents the experience of life. And birthdays are always a time of life reflection for me.
For anyone, like me, who spends a lot of time around water, we see how it’s never the same. She’s wild. She’s still. She’s murky. She’s clear. She’s low. She’s high.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it.
The waves are symbolic of life. Each another experience. Each an emotion. Each a sensation. They come. They go.
It’s also somehow fitting that it was my father who taught me how to jump the waves. He taught me to swim in to a wave. He taught me to love the ocean.
As a kid it felt like an adventure, to jump waves. My mouth would burst into a grin as the sprays of the ocean spat out on to my face. I’d even laugh at the way I’d get tossed around, swallow water and get dunked and come up sans bikini top or bottoms.
As I grew older, a greater hesitation occurred. Not as much freedom, more caution. What if the waves knock me about? Even drown me?
Perhaps the first time I experienced the waves, I was intrigued, but when they kept returning, especially what I thought were the not so nice waves, I became more tentative.
As I bathed under the moon in my birthday waters, I realised that maturity now has taken me around a new corner. I’ve come full circle and learning to welcome those waves, even when they aren’t always easy or smooth. And so too am I getting better at acknowledging those waves that will never come again, those that surprise me and those that will be firsts and yet to be experienced.
Life is water. Water is life.
Hanging around a hospital last week — a cancer ward — made me more so aware. And to know that even when it hurts, even when I get dunked, even when I get taken by surprise, I’m still here experiencing those waves and that is a birthday blessing indeed.
With love,
Sharon