WAITING - by Leza Lowitz

WAITING  by   Leza   Lowitz You keep waiting for something to happen, the thing that lifts you out of yourself, catapults you into doing all the things you've put off the great things you're meant to do in your life, but somehow never quite get to. You keep waiting for the planets to shift the new moon to bring news, the universe to align, something to give. Meanwhile, the pile of papers, the laundry, the dishes the job  it all stacks up while you keep hoping for some miracle to blast down upon you, scattering the piles to the winds. Sometimes you lie in bed, terrified of your life. Sometimes you laugh at the privilege of waking. But all the while, life goes on in its messy way. And then you turn forty. Or fifty. Or sixty... and some part of you realizes you are not alone and you find signs of this in the animal kingdom when a snake sheds its skin its eyes glaze over, it slinks under a rock, not wanting to be touched, and when caterpillar turns to butterfly if the pupa is brushed, it will die  and when the bird taps its beak hungrily against the egg it's because the thing is too small, too small, and it needs to break out. And midlife walks you into that wisdom that this is what transformation looks like  the mess of it, the tapping at the walls of your life, the yearning and writhing and pushing, until one day, one day you emerge from the wreck embracing both the immense dawn and the dusk of the body, glistening, beautiful just as you are.