Living in Between

It has occurred to me the last few days that I am living in that in-between space.  Perhaps you know what that looks like and feels like. I do not feel as good as I will some day down the road, but I am not feeling as awful as I did a couple or so weeks ago. Behind feels like yesterday and tomorrow feels like a long way off down the road.

Some people do not get to experience the living in between. Whether it is their health, the loss of a child, or the loss of someone they love, this is as good as it gets.  When we're in that space of it's as good as it gets, we wrestle with how to do life when change is not likely to happen. I have two friends who have experienced amputations.  I admire their courage in recuperating from the surgery, stabilizing, and preparing for the prosthetic and then adjusting to life with the artificial limb. They will never have two legs again, but then, again, living with one is better than a diseased two, so they decided. Or perhaps for all of us who have experienced unspeakable grief, our hope is for a tomorrow that does not have grief and loss in it, and that may just be in eternity.

Another challenge is looking in the mirror or into the mirror of my friends faces, eyes, and words.  "You look great," I hear these days.  So, there is the gap between how I feel and how my friends, and even my family, say that I look. I am learning to pace myself with both OTC meds and with work and other activities. A long day at the desk or out and about must be paid for physically and emotionally tomorrow.

Such it is with living in that space in between what was and what will be.

I am pondering other friends living in between. The farmer who lives in between, knowing that he has a case in court in which he could get clear title to his land, but he must wait, and wait, and wait. A farmer who works the land because he can, and he does not know if nor when they, whoever they are, will come and demand its return to them. Or another farmer who remembers what it was like to farm and to do well at it until the FSA office did its thing, denying loans, waiting forever to approve them, and on and on, and knowing that he'll never farm again.  The farmer who knows that his crops are growing and that they are looking good in the field, knowing that rain, too much rain, is coming.  Then he'll know how much is in the field to be harvested. Or the son of deceased parents who loved the land and died protecting it.  He lives between then and what the future holds, and he does not want to talk about the now looking back to the then and its pain and suffering for him and his parents.

Shoun and I are working hard on the documentary. We want it to make a difference. We have heard stories of unspeakable grief and loss of land, livelihood, and identity.  We want to go to as many places as we can to show the film in the hopes that it will make a difference in how African Americans are treated in the farming bureaucracy. This is now and that is then.  We live in that space in between.

I am by disposition and choice a man with goals and objectives and to-do lists a mile long for each day.

For now, though, my to-do list contains a reminder from family and friends.  That reminder is "slow and steady wins the race even when there is no race."

Living in between means that I feel better than over the past few months as there are no drains coming out of my body.   I sleep in my own bed and am no longer taking narcotics. I just have to get used to the notion that I may look better than I feel. That validation is not painful but there is a little irony in it.

I am waiting for tomorrow. Patience may not be my first option, but I'll surrender to it in order to get there, whenever it arrives.  Maybe I'll be surprised.