Island Blog – Borderlines

The tide is high. It’s a May thing. Two full moons and she is sassy with it, building already, shifting tides, lifting beyond established expectations already, anticipating something new and inventive, a space to wide out. I remember that feeling, the opportunity to break through a line drawn in the grit and spit of childhood when I wanted to fly above the whole map and redraw it. There are many lines and I probably don’t need to draw them because anyone living within those confines feel them like chasms or buffers. Either way, you fall. Until you don’t, until you have the courage to ask for help, or to jump, or to just run. Nature does it all the time.

We meet borderlines everywhere. At work, in a community, within a relationship. Some we have to allow and accept, many we don’t. Within our lives, so very much is different. Some of us do have the choice to argue, to demand our own space, our own thinking, our own beliefs and to hear that they are considered despite generational beliefs and accepted confines. Not many, I’m guessing. But in my feral world, in my so called recalcitrant childhood, in my difference and my confusion, there is always the chance for a voice. If it would just find the courage to speak out. I didn’t, but I did find someone who would and did. It happened to be my life partner, and I was lucky in that. Borders did not bother him. He broke borderlines all of the years. But even now in widowhood I remain cautious until I stop and think. And that’s important. In simplicity, this is it and there is me. We don’t match. Obviously it begs the question. And?

In my long life I watch many borderlines shift and pull away in a curve, a gentle thing, a giving, a sharing of space. In communication, within relationships, in moments. Someone chooses not to follow the line. Someone decides to curve and bend, to allow and then to move on beyond the border with a smile.