April arrives in Austin and places me on the other side of a March that stormed with lessons.
I am clearer now – in my financial goals, in trusting of my own resiliency, even in trusting the wisdom of life itself.
I’m at the bottom of the exhalation where the inhalation, the embracing of life-force energy, the emergence of a spring, blooms up and propels me into a chapter that is both an ending and a beginning.
This is the ending: April is the final hoorah before my birth-month. My 28th year of speak matures and fades, and there are subtle and grand reveals that show themselves along the stream of the way. The lessons lead me forward to 29, where speak will show another spirit word to guide me out of my last year in my roaring twenties.
This is the in between: April in Austin drips in surreal, lush beauty. Exuberant and gorgeous greens, enchanting light, wild affairs of bluebonnets mingle and merge into a breathing Impressionistic painting. The air cascades in sweet waves, and I drink in this tonic that feels like hope.
I almost missed this.
“When did this happen?” I ask her as we walk along familiar trails no longer familiar in their royal resplendence of emerald. “It’s like it just popped up.”
“It’s been happening gradually,” she gently replies.
This is this beginning then: to plant a seed of intention to keep me focused, to keep me present, to keep me rooted so I can focus on reveling in this life.
And this is a life that I still awe over.
This life in Austin is an unexpected, perpetually giving gift that challenges me to become by questioning, clarifying, releasing, rising.
My second year in Austin rushed, riveted, restored, moved rapidly and in honeyed slowness.
This is a life I sensed before I ever envisioned, and I could not have possibly envisioned what was to take shape, or how it was to take shape, or how it’s even going to continue to unfold.
The woman I was two years ago, who took the wheel and broke skin on her palms for gripping the wheel too hard for too long, pulsed in terror and thrill and excited determination to follow a spirited whisper that beckoned westward.
This call to Austin interrupted a love-lit life in Lexington. There was community and a commitment to service, an invitation to deepen roots; and suddenly a curiosity for a change that if not answered would pale into quiet and erosive regret.
I live on the other side of that decision.
I live inside the certainty to go and inside the uncertainty of what happens next.
I live more at ease in my truth, so when people ask me why I moved here, I speak this knowing:
“Fate. Destiny. Creativity.”
I live in a city that commands that I know myself and emboldens me to stand in support for myself.
I live inside the exuberant exquisiteness of an April in Austin that marks a beginning and an end.
I awaken in anticipation on the day of my Austinversary, because there’s ritual here, in honoring what was and acknowledging the promise of what could be.
On the day of my Austinversary, I sport sequin purple tennis shoes to work at a creative arts school, and the work feels like play and the play feels like purpose, and the purpose addresses and soothes and even (big sigh of relief) quiets the ache that wonders if I am being of service.
We make butterflies out of coffee filters and tie them on strings to fly them forward into spring.
The white butterfly winks as a sign that I am in the right place and at the right time. So as I water color with young Georgia O’Keeffes and Monets, I trace back to the woman I use to be and how her mind held other plans, but she’d be happily suprised to see where she ultimately would land.
And in the landing, since this is spring, and there are seeds to tend to, there’s a word that resurfaces to refresh and place me back in the remembering of secured being and kindness.
Forgiveness.
Forgiveness practice on my Austinversary to free myself from the judgment of what I didn’t know, and patterns that still clench.
Forgiveness practice to free me from anguish and see the light of another who may not or may be hurting.
Forgiveness to flow me forward into existing so richly in this wondrous experience of Austin in spring.
Forgiveness to focus me forward on creating a life in a city that calls me to come home to a reverently listening heart.
Forgiveness to end my second year in Austin in grace and to begin a new cycle in rejuvenated faith.