Fine Line: No. 9 of 40 Forts

Fine Line: No. 9 of 40 Forts

Part of being a new mother is following your intuition. Last week, I came to the conclusion that I need to listen to the two dreams I have recently had about Lucy and her dairy allergies. The first time, I saw a beautiful but raw pattern on her stomach. It was quite intricate and detailed display of eczema. Of course, she doesn’t have anything like this on her body. I told Henry and he said that was guilt, not reality. Then a few weeks later, I had another dream about the first dream. I can’t remember the details, but it was essentially telling me that the first dream was correct. Her allergies are bothering her.

Henry has been a great trooper in our dairy-free life. But as soon as I let the first dairy slip, he was so ready to let the milk start flowing. Over the last couple of weeks, we have eaten pizza three times. At least. We even ordered a pizza from Papa John’s. We totally fell off the band wagon.

She lost sight of the hard line of logic long ago.

So last week, I declared that I was going to be strict with my diet once again. How do I explain it? I don’t know. I just do. And that’s what this is all about. Clearly, there is nothing visible that I can see. We can’t do any testing until one year. But I just have this feeling and that feeling is, well, I have to do what’s best for Lucy. So when Henry began asking me questions, all I could think about was how do you explain or answer questions when you just KNOW. It’s a lot like faith. It is faith, intuition, your gut, all of those good things. And my gut is telling me that my daughter’s gut is not very happy.

When it came down to justifying my feelings, I realized where I stood in trusting my intuition. I have always been highly intuitive and I realized that reconsidering it wasn’t even an option. And hadn’t been for a long, long time. And that is where I came up with the phrase:

She lost sight of the hard line of logic long ago.

The line between reality and reflection

I love this image of the picnic set floating on water from an Anthropologie catalog. I intersected a hard line defining the point of where reality and reflection meet. The photo stirs up images of Jesus walking on water. At the same time, Peter also walked on water until he started to think about it. He became afraid by the wind and the waves and almost drowned until Jesus saved him.

What are we capable of doing when we don’t think about how to answer all of the questions?

This paper sculpture, roughly the size of a coffee cup, is one of forty forts I created during Lent 2010 as a creative exercise and spiritual exploration.

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