Let’s Do the Time Warp Again . . . and Again

The way she looked at him took my breath away and sent me rooting for my camera.

The way she talked to him reminded me I probably shouldn’t be eavesdropping.

But there she was, an embodiment of a 17th-century woman from Massachusetts serenely tending her garden.  And there he was, an exuberant 11-year-old boy I occasionally feel was born far too late.

She spoke to him of her vegetables, the progress of her radishes, and how she was looking forward to the harvest so she could “slice them thinly and place them on buttered toast.”

He listened, soaking in her words, completely present in her moment and in this time.  He replied, “That sounds absolutely delicious.”

And he meant it.  To him, from her, though he had no prior experience with radishes on or off buttered toast, she spoke a truth that was alternately familiar and intoxicating.

Whether she broke character at that moment of connection and became a person who found him simply a sweet little boy out for the day with his family at Plimoth Plantation or remained a character out of place and from another time who found in my son a kindred soul, I do not know.

What I do know is that the softness of her eyes, the gentleness of her posture, the mystique of her words elicited from him what I know to be the best in him.

And every time someone can see what I see in this beautiful boy,  no matter in what century they may happen to reside, I can exhale.  A little bit more. And intentionally.

Climbing

A few days ago I woke up and knew it was time.

Time to put fingers to keyboard and start to write, start to move through this phase of my journey in the same way I have negotiated so many other moments.

Nadine Gordimer famously remarked that “writing is making sense of life.”

So, tonight I begin to make sense of this life of mine and write about divorce.

Divorce is all around us, if the statistics are to be believed, and it is and was certainly all around me.  My grandmother, mother, family members, friends, colleagues.  But as much as one human being can appreciate and empathize with another’s experience, it is not until you are in the throes of it yourself that you begin to truly understand.

Six months into the process, I most certainly cannot proclaim to be an expert nor do I yet have words of wisdom to impart.

What I do have is six months of learning and, fortunately, now, just as much hope.

Three weeks ago today, for the first time, I climbed a mountain–a small mountain, but a mountain nonetheless.  The boundless metaphors I encountered on that journey paled in comparison to that moment in the car, driving forward and back to my family, when I realized I had done something I never before thought possible and that there actually and still resides within me a strength sufficient to keep climbing and now to start writing.

For them, of course

But also for me.