When You Don't Wish Upon A Star

Being a long-time quilter who has always preferred a vast variety of fabrics in quilts over "match-y - match-y" for years and knowing an acceptable mix of fabrics requires much dilligent and constant hunting, scrounging, auditioning and rejection AND someone who by necessity 'collects' (from junk/yard/garage sales and thrift stores) a piece at a time (sometimes over a period of years) to furnish/decorate a room...I have a HUMONGOUS appreciation for fantabulous moments when the 'just right', piece de resistance, icing on the cake thing just falls into my lap.

I seldom experience synchronicity like today when Jamie Ridler's Wishcasting Wednesday prompt was 'What Do You Wish To Embrace? '

Monday night this week I had prepared for staying up into the wee hours of Tuesday morning - drank three cups of instant cappucino late afternoon & early evening - hoping to catch a glimpse of one or more 'shooting stars' in the supposed peak viewing hours of the Leonid Meteor shower. As I sat outside in the dark with my face up to the starry sky, I remembered nights I had sat on the front stoop watching the stars with my Mom when I was 8 or 9 and first learned to make a wish on a shooting star. I thought should I see a shooting star that night, what should I wish?

And I was missing my youngest daughter, Rachel, (now half way across the country in her 3rd year of college in Michigan) who would sit up with me watching for shooting stars and thinking of the conversations we'd had over mugs of milk-y flavored coffee as we sat in our lawn chairs with our faces up to the sky. I realized sitting there - missing her like that - next week is Thanksgiving and she won't be here for it, wasn't last Thanksgiving, nor Christmas either, spending them instead out of thrift and frugal practicality with her siblings and father and stepmom just a couple hours' drive from her campus in nearby suburban Chicago. And I had to admit two consecutive years without sharing major holiday meals and celebrations, without daily hugs and kisses and secrets and surprises exchanged and shared means my girl - my 'baby' - my youngest of four not being 'home' means my nest is empty. I've become as they say, an 'empty nester'.

That same day was my oldest son's 31st birthday. I've been tending 'hatchlings' for 31 years + ---- WELL over half my life. This 'empty nest' state isn't a phase I'm being introduced to to shake hands with or even kiss on the cheek and move on. It's the rest of my life!

And so...after much consideration as I expectantly watched the sky for a shooting star to wish upon, I determined my wish would be to embrace (hold closely with tenderness, assume or take up in an eager or serious way) being an 'empty nester' - but I didn't see even one shooting star. I must have been being allowed to hold it for today's wishcast.

"We must sacrifice the urgent, petty agendas of the ego to a larger field or participation. We must learn humility and own humor, finding guidance in intuition and making logic a servant rather than master. Control is a personal experience, surrender is a transpersonal one. Through surrender we learn to move with the rhythms that flow through our existence and in so doing open ourselves to the wellsprings of life that are the gift of the divine Trickster." ~Allan Combs (from Synchronicity)