how I learn sometimes

On this quest for understanding, for even a trickled spring gilded bright beneath with treasure, I tread many empty days in which pebbles scuff my toes along shores of speculation.

But one drear morning, a wise old trout, twenty-five inches at least, appears and travels beside me, tipping a shiny sliver of insight toward me with a flick of tail.

The tenuous possibility remains, newly-minted, like the handful of difficult notes I’m supposed to spill with charm from my aging flute the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

This morning’s insight regards my grandma, the woman who spurs me, through anger, to limn her failings on paper and maybe even take revenge. But now I pause. The grace of that grandfather rainbow-fish reminds me…….there’s a notion I’ve heard about reasons for actions being rooted in an individual logic. A particular wisdom possibly motivated the woman I and so many have misunderstood.

Whichever proprieties you and I hold, she violated a portion of them. But have I ever asked why? Good grief, yes, I have, and yet always from the outside. Never imagining the inner girl, who may have looked a lot like me, deserving more leeway than I offered. Could this be because I didn’t yet see I could offer such compassion to myself?

Hm. Grandma may not have only sought to please her varied passions. A fear, born by moonlight and sweat and a stranger’s perversion, may have warned her early on not to trust her little children to a stepfather. Thankfully, for my dad’s sake, she forced him to grow up, safe, with her caring mother. No way existed for her to spend time treading water, explaining to the family why she did these things. She like all of us was locked in cycles, seasons, emotions, rivers of apprehension, the ravages faced during storms. She may have done the best she knew.

At dawn’s breaking I scuff along. My river’s empty, except for a memory of flashing tail, and I note the accustomed calling to practice a new discernment.