the veil thins

I went down to my backyard today and it seems like overnight it’s filled with Beltane energy. The foxgloves and roses are in bloom, and this strange spring now bears the first hint of summer. I cut flowers for my altar, remembering suddenly a Beltane 14 years ago when my heart was in similar state. It was the Beltane after the first war in Iraq, and I was bereft. Years of trying and failing at bearing a child had brought me to grips with grieving that this was not to be. Five years of trying and two miscarriages had taken a toll on my marriage. I was sure he was having an affair, something he denied repeatedly. I still can see her as she walked her bike ahead of us when we took to the streets that January when the bombing started, me knowing in my bones that what should be between he and I was flowing like a river between them. There was no evidence, nothing concrete to base an accusation on, yet I knew.

At the end of April, he was away, doing something for Greenpeace in Australia. I went down to the garden to cut flowers for my altar. My heavy heart lifted when I saw a toad under the foxgloves. A big toad. The first and only toad I have ever seen in San Francisco. Suddenly, I could feel the magic all around me, the potency of nature, the beauty, the incredible possibility. Then my high school boyfriend, my first love, called out of the blue. He was in town. We had lunch on the first of May. I told him my hurts, he smiled that wide smile of his, took my hand, and we ended up in bed. As a pagan, I was rationalizing it as a spiritual act, it being Beltane and all. Somewhere in the heat, he blurted out that he was going to make me pregnant. I pushed that away, feeling he was being uncharacteristically grandiose and dramatic. Two and half weeks later, I knew that the toad, the garden, and the fey had conspired. My old love was on target. A baby was in the works.

That was a hard spring, an even harder summer. I told my husband. Three months later, he finally confessed to the affair. Somehow we stayed together for another 10 years, and my son regards him as his dad. Jay, my first love, is also in Casey’s life, and as Casey says “My dad is my dad, but Jay is my father, not my dad, its different”. And it is. Somehow this all worked out, and we all were blessed by the magic of that Beltane.

My heart sits like a stone in my chest today, so very like my heart of 14 years ago. Why does loss make the heart denser? Like a wave, memories washed over me this morning in the garden, and I time traveled back. There was no toad, but the veil is thinning in the same way, and the same fey spirits are out there in the greenery, taking an interest, perhaps even meddling. I'm ready for something new to be conceived, for something wonderful to be be borne out this strange spring, and for me to follow the lead of the season and to start to LIGHTEN UP! I could feel the possibility of it this morning in the garden, and that old familiar sense that some party is being planned, some fate is being woven, some magic is afoot. Time to buy a new bottle of irish whiskey and up the offerings.