Love

I have been in that space between dreams and memory where the reality of what we have to do everyday on pavement crusted dust holds no meaning.
Now I have myself convinced after the waves overcame me and took my breath that chemistry means danger.
So I hold up in my cloak of strength and watch my innocence vaporize. There's a lyric that has always stuck with me about The Lord playing a hard game and following every rule, then taking the one thing.... well, My innocence was the one thing I thought I would never lose.

After everything that has happened in my life, I always had a glimmer of hope and a belief that I would end up wrapped in an existence of truth and connection. All I had to do was wait and walk forward.

But now that time has passed youth altogether and the road is not as captivating as it once was. Just more phone lines and fields passing by and by like the same picture. The same stories at dinner. The same memories. No expectation and no reward.

Beauty is not looking back at me with rosebud lips and flushed cheeks. Not even the ones that are named to,  look with any interest to my north.
Worn out excuses and scattered souls are part of my tapestry. All of them with more bravado and selling power than I could ever muster even if I tried my old techniques.

And real truth is hard to come by, like some rare herb or tincture from a snake oil salesman's cart. It's myths and legends have no power in this era. People watch you for what you have to give rather than to discover who is watching behind your eyes. I can see the attention like a drug teasing that it is about something deeper but in fact it is base primal need over and over like some human developmental plateau. Food, water, shelter, money , clothes, status, image....
I just watch the envy eyes. The looking eyes. So much interest given away like meaningless paper stolen from ancient woods.
I'm raising my daughters, writing, making things with my hands and practicing yoga. I don't get paid. I don't contribute by selling or buying. It's a worthy life but not one that stacks up follows or likes. Not with any catnip momentum that would turn their attention to me for more than a few moments.
" so what do you do?, besides the kid thing?"

I've never been one to be tolerant of much. I am self aware enough to know it is one of my lesser qualities that stems from my childhood. I am impatient to get past superficiality. It makes me squirm. Especially talk that is small and unfriendly.  People listen for what they want to hear,  for sameness, static answers that will get them back to their cars by 9:30 and invited to the next gathering of conversations about how much we are all accomplishing as we spin around on this tiny stone. I am bored easily if I don't search for the love inside of that experience.

So far in my life there are only moments. Besides of course the countless treasures that my children give me every day which have taught me everything I really need to know about love. But there are the less obvious versions of love that I can not fail to recognize anymore because they have become the actual love of my life that is,  what is in front of me rather than what I am missing.

When she leans in to touch the back of my neck with her soft fingers like she did when I was very small. I can feel the care.  Over dinner with someone I hardly know, there is half a second where our eyes meet and for that half a second a flood of vulnerability and truth and open affection is revealed and then sucked away into the black hole of unfamiliarity again, but not unnoticed by me.

tenderness of strangers is love to me, that moment when someone smiles at you or lets you pass or relates to you in line and your whole day is changed. Your heart is charged ,  lifted and you have hope again. 

When someone is honest when it is inconvenient. The kind of honesty that sets you free from any self doubt. Accountable honesty. It's a rare breed and it is love. 

 After being twice divorced, love hasn't become what my innocence projected for me. There haven't been decades of security, I haven't been the one and only who is growing old alongside someone and sharing our lives. At least not in the Norman Rockwell sense that I had fixated on for so long.

I'm not fool enough to think I have any clue what is in store even by the time I finish this post, but I have let go of the older ideas about it. It feels right to me that this introvert is only going more inward and becoming less and less interested in conforming for the sake of companionship.

For me love has become a collection of all of these precious moments gathered together to form one sensation. One emotion that links them all together. Connection. No one is ever alone. Even the most painful agonizing experiences are shared by the most blissful ones. I am looking for these moments like a thief. Collecting them like little lost critters to come to my cozy home and be a part of my tribe. I will fold them into my thoughts and nurture them along like well spoken memories until they grow into strong light filled neuro-pathways pulling me up to a place where I am safe, forever young and loved.