Resilience

Kim is outside checking for slugs.

It's become this nightly routine of going out to Karen's garden with a flashlight and the container of salt to see if the buggers are eating the vegetables. Kim has the very compassionate practice of apologizing profusely to the slugs as she sprinkles salt on them. I on the other hand, have forgotten some of my Vipassana Meditation principles, which tell me that all creatures should be happy, and take some gleeful pleasure in seeing the fat blobs writhe as I rain down terror on them.

What a shift from a little over a year ago, returning from a 10 day silent meditation retreat and not wanting to hurt a fly. Hungry mosquitoes could come by and have a full feast on me and I would just observe the itchiness without judgement, lucky cock roaches would get swept out of the house hockey puck style rather than get smashed by rolled up magazines. I'm not quite sure when the shift happened, but now the critters get it.

One ironic moment was when a cock roach scurried across our living room in Honolulu and freaked Kim and I out to no end. I have no sense of dignity when it comes to these huge B-52 roaches. I squeal and run as they aggressively charge back at me while I'm chasing them. Well this one time, the only thing available to me to fight back was an issue of Shambala Sun Buddhist Magazine. So I quickly grabbed it, rolled it up, and went after this roach. I throw down a couple of hard slams and the roach gets splayed out on the floor. I unroll the magazine to see a picture of the Dalai Lama's face smeared with cock roach guts. The man is the spiritual leader of Tibet and the embodiment of love and compassion. It may have been disrespectful, but I laughed and laughed and laughed at the irony of it all.

The roach, however, may have had the last laugh. In a last ditch effort that was probably some instinctual, involuntary muscle spasm, it squirted out an egg. Amidst all that chaos, its last act was an attempt to perpetuate its species. What a lesson on resilience. Life goes on.

The reason we've been on slug patrol is because Karen went off to Kona for about 3 weeks to teach some Huna Classes. She charged us with the responsibility of guarding the vegetables. I was torn the other day when Bodhi wanted to help me with slug eradication. We found some and he poured salt on them. At three, I don't think he fully understood the weight of what he was doing. I think he just liked seeing the slug twist and turn as pretty white crystals sprinkled gently on it's smooth body.

Kim and I have been very lucky the past couple of weeks here in Hilo, to have Karen here for us holding our hands as we transition to this new life. We've also gotten a tremendous amount of hand holding from Jim as he's taken us through the process of getting the cabin up and running so that we can move onto the land. Jim is leaving for Oregon on Thursday and will be gone for about three months. So two of our most solid anchors will be away while we make those final steps to living on the land. It kind of feels like when our midwife and doula left right after Bodhi was born and Kim and I looked at each other and asked, "What do we do now?"

We'll hold each other's hand, walk on over to edge, smile at each other, and take that next leap knowing that life supports us and there are profound lessons for us everywhere.