The In-Between

Everything always in the in-between.

Art by me.

The weather is warm but grey. Not quite raining but holding the promise of it.

I am on the eve of my exhibition, unsure whether I will be an artist or a gardener 48 hours from now. The new art-owners moving closer but not yet known to me.

I am at a weight I don’t like but not yet moved to do anything about it.

I am finished up with the last diet fad and on the cusp of a new one, meanwhile enjoying the in-between coffee cake and ice-cream required at this time.

I am reacquainting myself to the spiritual understanding that once sat at my foundations, but still writing prosperity affirmations. These are far more enjoyable than truth.

The rose outside my window is leafed in green but holds only a single dead flower.

I have new paints in my basket. I can almost feel them in my hands, yet I hesitate to drop the £200 that would make them mine.

We are nearing the end of Spring and heading into Summer.

My youngest child is at school but only most of most of the days. Stuck in an endless loop of attempting to hold GCSE certificates. We cross our fingers.

My eldest child is completing her year abroad and coming home to us tomorrow, we are half-way between a 4 person and 5 person family again.

My in-between child is holding a place for university and soon to begin, staying away with friends this week, leaving us more each day. We are half-way between a 5 person and a 4 person family again.

Half-way to a 3 person one when the terms starts again in September.

Slowly, slowly, slowly empty nesting. I predict a decade or more of this particular in-between.

I have signed up to writing class next term but it has not yet begun. I am waiting to begin.

The moon is at her fullest today and then she will start to dim her light again, always in-between.

I read the notes I made at the last full moon ceremony and notice the things I declared I intended to shed are still hanging on by their fingernails.

I am 53, emerging from the darkest menopause years but not yet fully in the body of the wise woman who is settled into herself that I imagine I will become.

I am between the regular dates on my calendar I set to meet with friends, each lunch or dinner dropping me into reality and real life; then in-between I vanish away into an other-world of imaginings and daydreaming and possibility.

I speak to my dad each week. He knows he’s in his last year of life. A true twilight.

My sisters and I are close to second year of the anniversary of my mum’s passing. My loss is open-ended, there is no bookend on this one.

My eye improves every day yet when I close the good one, the world is still twisted and incomprehensible. I see and yet I can’t.

The cars pass outside my window as I am writing, travelling between point A and point B, a thousand stories cross my path every day at their mid-point.

I am always looking to the end-points. The stops. The Bs.

Today I see there are no lines from A to B.

Only circles with momentary markers along their curves.

Everything always in the in-between.