Getting comfortable with the opposite of loss

"Thirty years of grief and longing have given her face the look of something too often folded and creased; a smile seems unfamiliar, And she tries it on now as she might some garment that she's almost certain will not suit.
"They try to prepare you for loss," she said. "It never occurs to them to prepare you for the opposite."
I nodded. "I know. We'll manage," I said. - The Girl With No Shadow, Joanne Harris

Theobroma cacao flower

From the small window at the foot of our futon I catch blurring shapes. My glasses are on the table. Once they're on my face I see the dust rise from the horse ring at the other end of the campground. Horses. Horses running without riders. Horses running free.

We've been living on this small town campground, part of the fairground, for more than a year. We've seen the cycle of comings and goings of people and vehicles, events and activity; and the lock-down brought on by the pandemic has shifted things even more. Not so good for the land-owners, the Port of South Whidbey, and not so good for the horse people who would be pulling in their trailers and preening their ponies as well as their riders for the often-monthly horse shows. But, for us mostly-permanent campers it's an unexpected cycle of the opposite of loss.

It feels, to me, like transformation.
It feels, to me, like getting comfortable with the opposite of loss.

The photograph of Theobroma cacao flower, holds a space here on this very short post because I am currently enjoying a marathon read of Joanne Harris's novels about chocolate. The fruit of the Theobroma cacao flower is the fruit of chocolate.

While I attend to the inner world and deep work involved with getting comfortable with the opposite of loss the beautiful orchid allows me to write something of what is not quite ready to be a story.