{Today I went looking for a finished post that would work for Valentine’s day.  I thought I’d find a love poem, or a post written to women on the hard side of heartbreak.  Instead I found this.  Written ages and ages ago, and just waiting for a day like today.  Here’s to the crushes, the mad, crazy, weak in the knees moments that make us all believe in possibility.  Happy Valentines Day, everyone}

~~~~

That moment?  The 56^th time you check your phone for texts on an ordinary Tuesday?  You know you are really only looking for one name…

I really like that moment.

That butterflies before a coffee date moment.  That c’mere, ‘cause right now I want to melt myself into your bones moment.  That you just turned toward the window and the light hit your face and for a second my heart actually, seriously stopped but I can’t tell you that yet moment.

No matter how many times you’ve had to walk away, a crush is all hello.  All drawn out contact and pleasepleaseplease.  It’s a longing for things that make you blush.  And want.  And tremor deep inside.  It’s slow slide anticipation.  Tender possibility wrapped in the most bliss-filled ache.

Maybe you don’t write your first name with his last name the way you did back then.  You don’t have a pink flowered journal where you daydream names for your one-day children.  You’re not so sure about the feminist ramifications of changing your name for love, and besides, your children already have their names.

But you’ve daydreamed the sound of his yes, and the feel of his arms and that tiny smirk of a smile.  You know just how it would feel to twist one of those curls around your finger as you leaned closer. Exactly how the rasp of his five o’clock shadow would brush against your cheek.  When he hugged you and your shirt held onto the remnant of his cologne – you knew that week there would be no rush to do laundry.

You’ve imagined what the way her lips would press against yours in that first electric moment.  Tried to conjure the sounds she might make as you as you lower her down onto cool white sheets.  Predicted what she would look like first thing in the morning, when the remnants of night visions still linger in her eyes.  You can remember with exacting detail what her pianist fingers look like wrapped around her coffee cup the day you met to talk about feminist theory, even if you don’t fully understand why this particular memory makes a shiver rise along your spine.

It’s the sweet angst of ‘if I asked would she say yes?’ and the second guessing of  ‘damn, I wonder what he meant by that?’ and ‘I think-I hope-he might-I mean maybe….’. And will she be there?  And what should I wear?  And oh, my…there he is.  There she is.

And here you are.

Oh.  My.  Yes.   I like that moment.

{enjoy the {crushable} soundtrack on spotify. as always, feel free to add your favorite falling in love-lust-longing songs to the mix}

It’s scary.  This love thing.  The sweet vulnerability of extension.  The naked of ‘here I am’.  The tentative reaching of outstretched arms.  The wide open of hope.

We all get a little lost here.  Wish we knew how to do it better.  Wish it were cleaner and more gentle and a little easier to understand.

We welcome the head long rush of it just as we try to run away.

Teach me how to be loved. We all say this over and over again, in different words or with the shift and sway of our bodies or in the silent spaces where words are left behind.

Teach me how to be loved.  Let me show you how to love me well.  School me in the workings of your heart, in the language of your bones.  Let my open palm memorize the shape of your face.  Tell me the stories of your scars so I can trace them with the honor of understanding.

Do you see this fault line?  It is where I was broken, over and over again, by the ones who came before you.  Are you willing to take that in?  My wide open eyes?  My truth lives there, if you look for it.   I have been loved by those who didn’t care to discover all that I am.  Will you be the one to see me whole?

It gets tangled sometimes.  The purity of beginnings become a hazy twist of expectations, the intermingling of past hurts and future fears.  We are the product of all that has already been, and of all that we hope will one day become.  We carry with us the bone memory of the loves that we have held and all that has been lost.  We don’t ever come into love without the echo of our past singing it’s siren song.

Can we do this?  Can we find in this love a gossamer thread of redemption to coax into a late night tangle of limbs and lazy Sunday mornings?  Will you follow me into the interplay of light and shadow?  Will you dance with me here, where the light and dark within me can mingle with the good and bad of you?

Teach me how to be loved.  It is a relentless forgiveness that allows us to return here, again and again.    Past the tears and the leaving and the broken spaces.  Back into the hope of more, the possibility of again.

We are made for this.  For the sweet vulnerability of now, for the outreach past fear and into unknown.  For the extension and unwrapping.  Even for the fault lines and the bittersweet of no longer ours.

We are an ancient sort of resilient.  Made for the falling and the rising.  Made for rose colored glasses and honeyed lips and finding new home in another.  Made for the burning down and rebuilding from ashes.  Made for the holy wonder of beginning again.

Teach me how to be loved.  Show me how to love you well.  Our hearts speak fluent optimist even when we try to cloak the hopeful whispers in layers of pessimism masquerading as protection.

We are here to love.  To speak our mother tongue to lovers who may stay or may go.  To learn the body rhythms of forever and of just for now.   We are here to open to the bliss and the risk and the possibility inherent in every beginning.

Teach me how to be loved.  Let me learn how to love you. Start now.  I’m paying attention.  I was made for this.

So were you.

a running list of ordinary blessings {6.24.12}
a new book of poetry. black dress with pink flowers. farmer’s market heirloom tomatoes. a solo trip to the library. Terry Tempest Williams, Anne Lamott AND a deliciously mindless mass market novel. shoes with ties that lace around my ankles. the smell of sandalwood and sweet orange. the heavy weight of desert heat. pinot gris in the fridge waiting to be opened. a movie date with my two girlies to see Brave. dark chocolate almonds to smuggle in to the theater in my purse. a slow day of very little work. a little girl who asks if she can learn to make her own flower essences. a friend who reminds me I was not made for mediocrity. photos of a wild haired beauty from across the sea. discovering new music from old friends. a neighborhood full of friends for my children to play with the way kids are meant to play. words. always words. wonderful night with my wee girls, who were sweet and well behaved and so very grateful. a female heroine who is NOT saved by a handsome prince. belly full of buttered popcorn.  movie soundtrack of gaelic and bagpipes, the music of my heart. 10pm ice cream sundaes, just because. bedtime cuddle in my bed, sandwiched between the two not-so-little girls that have my heart. the wine still waiting for after they nod off. photos delivered to a goddess, with humility and gratitude for what she gave me. words viewed through wine and glass.  getting lost in poetry and quotes and philosophy into the wee hours of the morning.  dark chocolate melting on my fingers and cool mint on my tongue. lucky penny in the parking lot that reminded me, once again, that in spite of it all – this life is a most holy collection of wonders.

He called me Dogface.

No, really.  He did.  It was a term of endearment, I promise.  A long-standing joke that wound through the years, connecting my grandfather and I.

“Get me some more tea,” he demanded one otherwise unremarkable summer day.

“How do you ask?” I replied, teasingly.

“Get me some more tea….Dogface”

And so it began.

That Christmas I found a holiday card in the shape of a dog.  I peeled a photo of myself- early 90’s hot-rollered hair and short velvet formal dress- from my photo album.  A few snips of the scissors and a little glue later and my face smiled back at me from the Dalmatian-shaped card.   I grinned to myself all the way to the college mailroom, imagining his face when he sliced open the envelope.

On break I traveled home and entered the house to find him – as always – holding court in the straight-backed blue chair by the door.  He was clearly antsy with anticipation and I soon realized why.  In the place of honor on the wall behind his head hung my card, now carefully mounted and framed, with a prominent BEWARE OF DOG sign carefully placed above.

And so it continued between my grandfather and I – a back and forth of teasing comments and practical jokes.  Both of us amused with our cleverness and determined to one-up the other.  I thought it would last forever.

He was immortal, I believed.  Ten feet tall and bullet proof.  Sure, we worshiped super heroes and celebrities, but if you asked my siblings, cousins and I to list our heroes, his name always topped the list.

When other kids bought their grandfathers candy cane festooned neckties for Christmas, we bought Granddad a Pogo Stick.  While other grandpas took their grandkids for a relaxing afternoon of fishing, we got World War Two era gloves strapped on for a hard-core boxing lesson.  We got plenty of grandfatherly love, but we also ran screaming and laughing in crazed laps around the house while he chased us relentlessly with a big leather whip.  Yes, he was crazy immortal.

From him I learned political theory and a fierce sense of justice and the importance of always speaking my mind.  That innate intelligence and good old fashion common sense outweighed formal education, but to grasp tight to every single opportunity to learn, classroom or not. I absorbed his commitment to community and society.  I knew, with a depth that can only come from witnessing something for a lifetime, that family – always and forever – comes first, last and always and is the common thread that winds through everything else.

My concept of romantic love came from the way he loved my grandmother, as if the sun rose and set on her smile.  My understanding of home and the value of knowing where the ground was solid beneath my feet came from the unwavering depths of his connection to the land that sheltered my childhood summers.    My understanding that smart was good, but good old-fashioned hard work was better was absorbed from the work ethic he embodied.  We learned to dig potatoes in the rich earth, and turn rough wood into swords and boats in the workshop, he’s the only one who could manage to teach me to parallel park well enough to get my license.  Every single weekend of the summer The Saturday Night Party found us gathered in the living room, Granddad ensconced in his blue chair – reigning patriarch of a family who loved him like no other.

My grandmother, the constant glue that kept it all together, gladly took the supporting role and gave him center stage.  It was his pride we sought to attain.  His laughter we worked to provoke. The measure of anything we did or undertook, created or achieved was what Granddad would think.  His opinion was primary and his satisfaction with our achievements outweighed all other rewards.  Not a word of this is an exaggeration, and not an ounce of our devotion was misplaced.

It was my grandfather that walked me down the aisle at my wedding, handsome and debonair in a classic black tuxedo, bringing to life one of my earliest wishes. Days later I prepared to leave Nova Scotia for my new life in Arizona.  Once, twice, three times I left everyone waiting in the driveway and made my way back to the kitchen.  There he sat, in his customary place at the kitchen table by the big picture window overlooking the bay.  Not once did he appear surprised to see me return. Over and over I returned to sit on his lap, trying to absorb his essence into my soul. His favorite brown cardigan with the patched sleeves, his perpetually well-shined shoes, his thinning hair, his twinkling eyes.  Although I never could have admitted it to myself at the time, it was as if something in me knew that this would be our last real goodbye.

***

Months later a package arrived at the small one bedroom apartment that Sam and I called home.   It was curiously lightweight and marked by his familiar black scrawl.  I remember looking up at Sam quite confused,

“It feels empty.  I wonder what on earth it could be?”

He laughed and replied.  “It’s a big ole box of Dogface, of course”.

I chuckled and rolled my eyes at what I thought was a lame joke, tearing into the brown paper wrapping with the enthusiasm of a child who has never gotten over the mysterious thrill of the postman’s delivery.   And when it was open all I could do was laugh out loud.   He was right.  Of course he was. It was a big ole’ box of Dogface, after all.

The package contained small soft doll, of sorts.   With the body and clothing of a witch, a studded collar encircling her neck, the gift might not have made sense were it not for the hard plastic dog head that was perched on top.

My grandfather, living in an 81 year old body ravaged by age and by cancer and heart disease, had retained enough of his inner mischief to cook up this scheme.  Purchasing a child’s doll and a rubber dog toy, dismantling their pieces and stitching them together to create the pièce de résistance in our ongoing game.

“Brilliantly played,” I told him when we next talked, imagining the great glee he must have taken in the orchestration of this.  I immediately began trying to come up with a way to top him.

I never got the chance.  He was taken to the hospital about a half hour from home.  I remember talking to my aunt and agonizing about whether or not I should make the very expensive trip home.

“You’ll know when it’s time”, she said softly with the resolve of one who has faced loss many times, “you’ll just know”

And I did.  I knew.  And mere days later I was flying back home.  Leaving the warm, dry desert and returning to a province blanketed in the thick snow of deep winter.  And I found the most vibrant, vital man I had ever known lying in a hospital bed, unable to muster the strength to speak more than a few words.   His clan had gathered, as we always did, around him.  We occasionally fell silent and he would motion with his hands as if to encourage our voices to surround him still.

I was in denial.  He would recover, and return home to white Dutch Colonial with the bright blue trim that he – a Canadian country boy – had built for his young American wife shortly after they were married. The home where she had birthed their children and together they had raised their family.  The home where we had learned all that we ever needed to learn about roots and family and love.  Of course he would return there – and be there always.  How could this not be true?  There was not even room in my heart for any other possibility.

The night before the very last my younger brother and I took our shift with him while everyone else went home.  That night we watched a man with more dignity than any I have known before or since accept our love, even when it meant that we supported him while he went to the bathroom.  We knew, even in the moment, a kind of hallowed and humble gratitude for the gift of that sleepless night.   For a long time I held on to every word we exchanged but now – trying to write of them for the first time, I find that the edges are fuzzy, and cannot be captured on this screen.  What I do recall was the privilege of being able to bear respectful witness to this man as he bore the collapse of his body with profound grace and solemn dignity.

The night that was to be the very last was a night of snow.  Heavy and white, it blanketed everything.  Howling wind and drifting high, until it was finally quiet; muffling sound and suspending time as we lived the life of palliative care, deep within the small country hospital.  And we were all there, very nearly.  Moving in and out of his room and the family room next door.  Eating and curling up together, giving love to him, and to each other as we all breathed the half-formed breaths of those who waited for the inevitable.

But still, I didn’t believe.  Didn’t really understand.  Didn’t want to know.  Couldn’t comprehend that we were in the final stages of our dance with a man who had claimed every last moment of his life as whole and solid and his to have and experience fully.

For hours it was the same.  Same quiet hushed tones.  Same cycles of in and out.  Same sharing of memories and quiet laughter and held back tears.  Same knowledge of the precious gift of this, of our connection, of what we had been given.

It was all the same until it wasn’t, and as his breathing changed so did our energy. Somehow we all knew.  Were all called back to his bedside without anyone saying a word.  And we surrounded him and filled that space.  Fully present with our bodies and hearts and souls and memories and gratitude and love.

My family encircled his hospice bed.   All of us.   His children.  His grandchildren.  His beloved wife. Together we spent our last moments with the man who had built us, a family of uncommon closeness.  A man with a life force so strong and vital that it filled the room and also filled my heart and lungs and soul the way it had always filled my life.  And we spent his last moments the way we had spent so many moments with him – together. Hands tightly clasped, arms around one another, we stood guard and witness as his spirit left the room.

This, twelve years later, stands as one of the only experiences of my life that I can name as Holy.  Where life balanced on the cusp between the physical universe and what exists beyond our comprehension.  There was a presence in that room that cannot be named or measured, and perhaps it was only what love feels like when magnified and crystalized by that sort of devotion.   Perhaps that sort of love is always Holy – it’s just that we don’t remember to stop and pay attention until a moment of irrevocable magnitude causes us to pause and open wide enough to take it all in.

Yes, it has been twelve years since that stormy night that changed everything.  And still, I remember him with an immediacy that proves to me that death is not an ending, not in the face of that much love.  It’s only a continuation really, of what has been taught and learned and lives in us always.

And still, they call me Dogface sometimes, their voices an echo of his teasing tone, their faces bearing traces of his lineage.  And I don’t mind.  It keeps him close to me.

***

We were digging through a crate of old memories last year.  Shoeboxes of letters from college roommates, concert ticket stubs and tattered photographs of old boyfriends.  Journals with youthfully loopy handwriting chronicling days long past.  “Mama, It’s like a time capsule of your life,” said my wee girlie, as she lifted bits of the flotsam and jetsam of my past from the depths of the bin.  And then there was Dogface.  Face cracked, limbs torn but still containing every ounce of his humor and love.   And I picked up that raggedy doll and held it close as tears came to my eyes and I remembered.

Yes, he called me Dogface.  And yes, it was a term of endearment.  I promise.

Dust floats on rays of light dancing just above my head. Sheets are rumpled from sleep; covers long ago lost to the floor.  Long morning shadows slice across her back and my face; alternating diagonals of light and dark with no regard for boundaries. Shadows do not see the end of her and the beginning of me – we are just parts of a space moving toward illumination.

These tiny details mesmerize and imprint in that split second before my neck arches back on the pillow.  The forgetting happens just as quickly.  All that remains is the endless expanse of skin against skin.

The air holds our awareness of the passage of limited moments, but there will be no rushing today.

The spaces between abject disillusionment and fierce connection dissolve.  Breath mingles and awareness travels across length and breadth.   There are days when knowing expands and you grasp fully that love is both mirror and magnifying glass.  What are strength and weakness but the same really, in the end?

Our bodies fit; a puzzle of infinite possibility.  Light kisses golden along collarbone and shoulder and I follow it– nimble lips along unyielding bone.  My back presses against soft white sheets; my heart against hers.  Our legs wind serpentine, this dance a sacrament of touch.  Inhale matches exhale until breath catches on words that need not be spoken.  Our hands tell all the stories that need telling now.

We have been offering ourselves as sacrifice to gods we do not yet understand or know if we should believe in. Today we offer ourselves only to each other; gods be dammed.

We have cracked ourselves open, pushed hard against unbending convention and screamed a defiant yes to the rush of fear that followed.  Secrets content to hide in the shadows have been ushered into the light and welcomed home.  Passion and possession loop and twist, a roller coaster where all seemed lost and then found again.  We have confessed and cried and torn at each other with words and hands and bitter silence.  Expansion and contraction, it seems, are never entirely without cost.

Hearts are raw, eyes unveiled.  We see all, but do not turn away.  But it’s all softness now, yielding flesh and lithe curves and the rightness of coming home. Hearts mirror hands and lips and sounds released from deep inside.  Moments pass measured only by quickening beat and rapid breath.  The light climbs and shadows shift until the room is a reflection of renewal.

Yes, time is measured now, but still we do not hurry. Bodies stake fierce claim, even in lingering uncertainty, that this is ours to have and to keep.  Now all the rush and butterflies of the initial free fall are balanced by depth and aching tenderness of two souls who have lived and loved a lifetime in a few short years.

And we live and love a lifetime in this brief moment.  Bodies weave spells and tongues speak incantations against skin as soft and salty as the ocean that calls me home.  Waves crash now and we are worn down and broken and shifted in the wake of their withdrawal.  Shifted and broken yes, unrecognizable perhaps, but always at the root of things exactly the same as we began.

Life calls to be awake to sacred moments. This is hallowed ground here; we are hallowed ground.  I am turned toward her now. Only her. Body, soul, mind, and broken and beating hearts.   Nothing will be sacrificed today; no spirit of martyrdom welcome in the offering of ourselves to one another.

She is mine, this girl, and I hers.  All questions can be measured against this moment. Measured against geometry of light and shadow, against slow slide of time on the bedside clock, against trail of fingertips across stomach.  Against ragged breath and locked gaze and grasp of interlaced fingers as we find our way home. Again, and again we find our way home.

Head falls back against pillow.  Her weight is heavy on mine; her head nestled against the curve of my neck.  Breath returns to normal.  The world refocuses.  I open my eyes and see the dust still floating in the rays above my head, as if nothing has changed.  I twist and twirl my hands upward, languid, wanting to be a part of their lazy path.

It is miraculous, I think, how something so ordinary can sparkle like magic in the right light.

We sit on the bed; crossed legs and open hearts. It has been a long night and an even longer morning.  I curl myself around you as you weep.  Shoulders heave and cleansing tears fall.  A truth too long held is released.

Confession.  Omission.  Anxiety.  Fear.  Agony.  Comfort.  Compassion. Love.   These all live in the small spaces between us.

Comprehension crystalizes mysteries that had surrounded us in undercurrent.   One fact arched over a span of years and a lifetime of hurt and delivered right here; to this bed, in this room, on this tender morning.

Despite the rest, there is always hope in the truth.

~~~

Oh, sweet baby, you are not broken. Not in the way that you think.

Yes, it’s true.  Your heart is cracked in a million jagged pieces.  You have carried memories of dark nights and trust betrayed. Your body has tenderly sheltered a lifetime of shame.   You have buried your wounds beneath scars and your scars behind words unsaid and pain unseen.

And you feel broken.  Oh love, of course you do.  Your soul is patched – holes stuffed with unmet hope and despair and desperation.   You have being viewing your reflection in a mirror broken over and over again by pain and shame.  You consider all of this your due.  Your secret.  Only yours to bear.

That ends now.  It must end now.

Because yes, you are broken.  And yes, you are perfect.   And you are never, ever alone.

~~~

We are in this together.  None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles.  Even in the worst of our desolation.  Even during our coldest 3am breakdown.  Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse.

Even then the light still gets in.   Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light.   Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost.

One way or another, we all grow toward the light.

We are resilient like that.  Our hearts are stubborn like that.  Our spirits – even under the heaviest of burdens – ultimately wild and free. And eventually, when we least expect it, the light finds its way in.  It always does.

And then everything is illuminated.  And all of our aching pieces, all the shattered bits, all the places we think we must tuck away from the world are bathed in radiance.  And only then does something become clear….

The closer you get to broken, the more it begins to look like whole.  Like beauty.  Like breathtaking truth.

And the truth is that we are all beautiful.  And we are all broken.  And even when you consider all of our hopelessly fractured pieces, all of us inherently whole.

Life cracks us into unrecognizable shards of former incarnations.  Slivers of our hurt, and our pain and our shame nestle next to fragments of our truth, our divinity, our fierce reclamation of power.

It is this very brokenness that allows us to knit together, kaleidoscope style.  And we spin and shift and turn to the light until we appear brilliant, lit from within.  Suddenly we are revealed; unexpected beauty born directly from brokenness.

We have to be willing to break in order to become.

~~~

Your sobs have quieted.  I hold you in my arms and radiate as much peace as I am able, hoping that some of it transmits directly to the center of your aching heart.

I cannot heal you.  I cannot fix this.  But I can help you gather the scattered and broken parts and hold them to the light.  I want you to catch a glimpse of what I see, a kaleidoscope configuration composed of color and geometry and all of your broken pieces arranged in imperfectly perfect symmetry.

You are broken.
You are whole.
You are beautiful.

I honor you.