When I'm nervous, I can never speak the words I have in my head. My tongue jumbles them and twists them around and I'm lucky to get out any sentence at all, luckier still if any of it actually makes sense. I see the bewildered looks, and don't dare offer explanation out loud - settling for desperate telepathic messages of sincere intent. There's so much I wanted to say, but couldn't risk damaging the day. And the day was EVERYTHING...my beautiful daughter and her family.
My daughter will never call me Mama again in this lifetime - but "Look at Grandma", Billy said...and I could have fallen to my knees in tears at that moment. I cringe that I do it, but I walk on eggshells, afraid to make a mistake. I am grateful my daughter allows us these halting steps, these moments that I can see her, be close to her, see my beautiful granddaughters. I look at her face - hoping I'm not staring - and try to feel her heart. It's all I can do not to reach out and touch her, hold her as close as I used to. Back when she called me Mama and I was younger than she is now.
Proximity is all I can hope for. Proximity is all that will allow pockets of opportunity.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Today's Friend
My friend wears a rabbit hat. One of us could wear it, true, and we all want it - but it wouldn't be the same. She and the rabbit hat become one. It isn't quirky. It isn't attention-seeking. She is the rabbit hat. There is no putting on...it becomes her.
She is immensely talented, and immensely humble. I don't know her brother, who is possessed of his own genius, but count him a friend. It's the wit, the humor, that we all share. It's a bounteous feast and we all count ourselves particularly lucky to tag along. Her laugh, heard once, is remembered and found impossible to describe.
She gathers loyalty, and dispenses more. There isn't anyone close to her who doesn't know she could be the first call in the middle of the night. Straight of priority, crooked of grin...
Sure, we have a lot in common. The hat thing (the rabbit hat would not inhabit me, I'm more beret to her quirk), the pun thing, the crazy spontaneous "who cares what people think as long as we don't hurt anybody" thing...all that and more. But it's not as much about how we're alike as how our differences complement each other. How the best parts of each of us (and each of her many, many friends) come together and multiply. Rabbits do that, you know. She'd have my back - and we have hers. The mere having of such a friend invites others...it's a gravitational pull that begins with her entry into your life, and once open, there's no closing that window.
It's lovely weather - lovely weather for a rabbit hat. Let me grab my beret.
She is immensely talented, and immensely humble. I don't know her brother, who is possessed of his own genius, but count him a friend. It's the wit, the humor, that we all share. It's a bounteous feast and we all count ourselves particularly lucky to tag along. Her laugh, heard once, is remembered and found impossible to describe.
She gathers loyalty, and dispenses more. There isn't anyone close to her who doesn't know she could be the first call in the middle of the night. Straight of priority, crooked of grin...
Sure, we have a lot in common. The hat thing (the rabbit hat would not inhabit me, I'm more beret to her quirk), the pun thing, the crazy spontaneous "who cares what people think as long as we don't hurt anybody" thing...all that and more. But it's not as much about how we're alike as how our differences complement each other. How the best parts of each of us (and each of her many, many friends) come together and multiply. Rabbits do that, you know. She'd have my back - and we have hers. The mere having of such a friend invites others...it's a gravitational pull that begins with her entry into your life, and once open, there's no closing that window.
It's lovely weather - lovely weather for a rabbit hat. Let me grab my beret.
The Change
My friend lied to me, about me, in front of me. I can't say it changed anything - much will go as it has for years. There is a genuine affection, and even love remains. But I question history, now, as it has been written. I question sequence, I question cause, and I definitely question effect. Seeing clearly is a light and effortless thing, it is true. The pain still has weight, and cannot be dodged.
Even as I choose to let the sleeping dog lie, I know it is both strength and weakness. I call it weakness because it seems enormous effort to uncover and right the wrong - for no gain in the end that I can imagine. So is it weak, or is it kind? Can it matter given the distance from this time, from this life?
I believe it matters only to me, within me, as a lense to my dreams. Which ones will I fight for - and at what cost? How can I know if any choice is the right one, the one least selfish? What arbiter can there be who can know enough but be blind to prejudicial conclusion, who can see enough to weigh in safely but not so close as to be myopic?
I've kept to my word. Will that change when death grows even closer? Is desperation born of mortality, or is it a shaking of the chains, a weightlessness that knows no risk? How will I honor all the promises and still be able to promise anything to myself?
When did my perspective shift from thinking my best year was 30 years behind me, when I see it now clearly ahead? All the words I hoarded then - the words that dried up in a seeming instant...they come slowly back, in small bursts and struggle now for reclamation. How I envied that Harvard boy, madly obsessive but oh so in command of perfect words. I wish I remembered his name, could find his book, and swim again in the tales he wove.
My own words return, and I will use them lightly. Use them often, learning again to tell the stories I carry. There's no such thing as closure. But there is opening, there is opportunity, there is hope.
Even as I choose to let the sleeping dog lie, I know it is both strength and weakness. I call it weakness because it seems enormous effort to uncover and right the wrong - for no gain in the end that I can imagine. So is it weak, or is it kind? Can it matter given the distance from this time, from this life?
I believe it matters only to me, within me, as a lense to my dreams. Which ones will I fight for - and at what cost? How can I know if any choice is the right one, the one least selfish? What arbiter can there be who can know enough but be blind to prejudicial conclusion, who can see enough to weigh in safely but not so close as to be myopic?
I've kept to my word. Will that change when death grows even closer? Is desperation born of mortality, or is it a shaking of the chains, a weightlessness that knows no risk? How will I honor all the promises and still be able to promise anything to myself?
When did my perspective shift from thinking my best year was 30 years behind me, when I see it now clearly ahead? All the words I hoarded then - the words that dried up in a seeming instant...they come slowly back, in small bursts and struggle now for reclamation. How I envied that Harvard boy, madly obsessive but oh so in command of perfect words. I wish I remembered his name, could find his book, and swim again in the tales he wove.
My own words return, and I will use them lightly. Use them often, learning again to tell the stories I carry. There's no such thing as closure. But there is opening, there is opportunity, there is hope.
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