lightening up

Tomorrow I fly off to Portland for the last wedding of the season. I just got a call from a friend who’s already traveled there from the Bay Area. She called to talk to me about her neighbor dying suddenly this week. She’s feeling guilty she went to Portland instead of being there for the teenage daughter. Listening to her, I realized that she’s in grief, that it’s starting to hit her that a friend is dead. We are both witches, and this wedding is a wedding of two witches. After the wedding of last week, I’ve been thinking that this one will be a cakewalk, a stroll in the park. During the phone call I made peace with the fact that I am gearing up for another piece of monumental magic. It’s clear she is supposed to be there, that her grief will be a thread in the magic woven this weekend. This wedding too will have its human drama, human drama that’s already taking shape.

I spent last evening talking to my soon to be ex-husband up on my deck, with the city lights flickering all around us. It was the most comfortable time we’ve had together since we broke up five years ago. Our papers are now all signed for our divorce, it should come thru soon. I felt a tenderness towards him, and a surprising gratefulness for our history. Our wedding was fraught with all storylines that would be woven into our marriage, and all the issues that would eventually fray it to the point of coming apart. As we talked into the night, I marveled at how much we both had let go of, how old battles were now even being remembered with humor. Our war stories no longer throw us right back into the fray. The fight has left us.

This has been an incredible summer, and incredible time. One in which my household has reconfigured itself, one in which I’m consciously looking at what I want to be wedded to, and what I need to divorce myself from. Tomorrow I fly off to witness yet another wedding. As I do this, I will be focusing on what I need to continue to let go of. It’s time to lighten up.