By Maria Padhila
I had a very strange week recently, and that was before the earthquake.
I was in bed when the earthquake hit, by the way — alone. And no, didn’t have anything going on — I was trying to take a nap. I wanted to meditate on what I was learning about receiving and what was happening to my body and some big aspects coming up that were going to activate my scary Mars-Saturn square. I just needed a little time. I’d only gotten out of the hospital a week before, and I was trying to sneak an hour in the middle of the day to just lie down and rest, and what happens? Earthquake. Damn.
Maybe I’d better back up. Isaac and I had been traveling for weeks, ending with picking up our daughter from one group of relatives, going to visit another group of relatives, and then having a long drive, a short camp, and a day of tubing on a river in the mountains with a large group. Fun, right?
But I was feeling bitchy and cranky and ill. The easy drift in the sunshine, with a few tiny whitewater passages, that this tubing trip was supposed to be turned into a battle without a paddle in the face of a headwind and spitty bursts from gray clouds. Just trying to get into the current was a fight. We couldn’t hold Tobi’s tube and paddle at the same time, so we rigged lines out of Chris’s bandana and t-shirt and my sports bra, which I struggled off under my tank top, while trying not to flip the tube. Our little Redneck Yacht Club flotilla barely moved, even with Isaac’s strong paddling from the front and Chris kicking from the back. In the middle with Tobi, all I could do was paddle with one hand. Even in my frustration, I couldn’t help laughing at the picture we made: “This is not a metaphor!” I proclaimed to the sky.