The Wait….

My paperwork is officially submitted to the settlement offices here in the UK.

Yesterday we drove into Edinburgh so my fingerprints could be taken and my face snapshotted. Since I am not an EU citizen like Silas, I had to be physically seen and documented before my paperwork could be submitted to the government agency.

Then we walked to this pub to consider all the many many things that are currently out of our hands. We’ve done our part to get official here and now we wait. It’s not up to us.

And it’s strange, because for the first time in a decade, back in April, I threw myself into our Taos garden. Covid had made it seem as though we would be at our house 24/7for the entire summer and fall, so I planted perennials and dug up old flowerbeds and put down mulch. Now there are daisies, echinacea, yarrow, hydrangea, lupine, poppies, lilies and delphinium and blue bonnets to cavort with the roses and peonies. We laid new pipe for the drip system and bought new hoses.

We sweat and dug and fertilized and hand watered and whispered and deadheaded and tended and medicated and sang and purged and lullabyed.

And now we’re in Scotland while the garden suffocates through 100 degree days only to be SNOWED ON last night.

Uncle! Uncle! I cry uncle!

Who knows if we will have a garden to return to. Who knows if we will return at all. Who knows if we will be granted residency in the UK and how we will move home and museum and six dogs and mother. Who knows what will happen with Covid. Who knows what will happen with travel. Who knows what will happen to our livelihood given that our industry is wrapped up in tourism and the good old fashioned business of gathering in groups of wonder.

What I do know is this beer. And this whisky. And how lucky I am to be alive among so much uncertainty. I know friends. I know forces. I know love and hope and dreams come true. I know kindness, and have been lucky enough to be its recipient a good deal of my life.

I know this moment is a moment of truth and trust, no matter how this path unfolds. I know you’re here with me in some way, tribe, rooting for an impossible dream. I know gratitude walks the hallways of my heart attempting to sing louder than the worry chant in my mind.

And this is enough. This now. Exposed and vulnerable and lovingly wide open…enough.