Wait
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
***
Feeling sad lately, whether it's Christmas bringing up Mom's absence or something else. Watched "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney tonight and one simple comment she made about how sometimes the brain dies far in advance of the body just undid me for the evening. My general weepiness drove Brett to flee into his office. I cried in the car today
and yesterday. It's been a while since I've done that. I mostly cry in the car when I need to, it seems, partly because it scares Sofie to death to see me cry, and it's one of the few places I'm ever alone.
Brett told me today that he doesn't care much for Christmas outside of the house but inside our house he loves it because of me. I thought that was one of the sweetest things I'd ever heard from him. Christmas when we were growing up wasn't a fancy thing; it was never about the immense stack of glittery presents that would be waiting under the tree, although that didn't stop us from going through an elaborate ritual of leafing through the Sears Roebuck catalog and making the world's longest Christmas list. Somehow I never got that rock polisher I asked for every year.
We'll have both my dad and his Dad with us for Christmas this year, which is a first, and no Mom, which is of course another first. Every time I see my Dad I'm so painfully aware of the future. Someday he'll be gone too. I can't stand the thought and yet I think about it all the time. It's as if I am constantly rehearsing my griefs. Hopefully that passes too. In the meantime, I'm so glad he's here - not just here on this Earth, but here across the street. Thank god, thank god, they moved out here.
Christmas this year holds other wonderful things -- Sofie is so aware of it this year, and so excited. Every day she takes a piece of fabric or a scrap of paper and wraps something up, a little toy, a stuffed animal, and gives it to me. "I have a surpise for you!" she says, all bated breath, and I open it and look delighted. I like that she's miming the giving of gifts as much as the getting of them.
Last night we went to see the Bellevue Botanical Garden's Garden D'Lights. It was maybe 28 degrees, unbelievably cold for Seattle, but we tromped around in the dark with a bunch of other families, Brett hauling Sofie around on his shoulders and me keeping track of Dad and making sure he didn't trip or stumble, and it was really lovely. Dad's game to go just about anywhere these days and is such nice company. He's got a new hat with a flashlight built in, three settings - high, medium, and low beams - and it was an excellent chance to try it out.
"Would your mom have liked the light show?" Brett asked later that night. Probably not; she often wasn't real comfortable going places with us. Invitations often seemed like impositions to her, and the dark and uneven paths would have been near-to impossible for her to manage. But I missed her all the same while we were there.
So we gather up what there is of our little family and move on, out of the chilly night and towards the warm house where the red and white lights glow along the roofline and the Christmas tree lights wink out the dining room window, where I glance out the upstairs window before I go to sleep to see if Dad is still up and glance out again in the morning to see if he's taken his paper in and is therefore ok, and we all feel a little bit more than we used to how precious - and fleeting - every bit of connection can really be.
