A Question for Love
Posted on January 6, 2010 with 0 comments
The tree is full of morning doves. I open the French doors to throw a mangy Pointsetta into the snow, and they are looking at me. Do they know how far I have traveled to get here? And now in the swirl of winter’s blustery white, we are holed up together, a wonder to each other. Just as if it were always so.
The jays pretend not to see me because they own the place. They believe the feeders strung all around this huge wooden house are their right, not their privilege. My husband plays into this by chastising himself should any of the stations be forgotten, even for a day, and the seed receptacles gone empty. He tells me no one likes blue jays, and so my secret love of them must go unnamed as I watch them move with the determination of kings from branch to sky, seemingly impervious to the gusts of intoxicating mountain wind. Not like the little chickadees my husband favors, their reliable songs coming from everywhere, unseen and delicate, like clockwork, their small bodies working with.
And so I got a letter from an old friend with whom I’d worked for many years in musical collaboration. Out of the blue these things can come, on a seemingly random day or despite mercury in retrograde. People have free will that defies all restriction and at any moment an impulse can turn the status quo on its head. Her message stepped outside into the wilderness of the future, to create it, to embrace it and take me along. It was a gift of heart and these are the steppingstones of our lives.
Same day a family member didn’t call or finally did, too late. My tender regard for her already hardening off, like sap on the outside of a pine tree. Just a different manifestation of love, not as warm or flowing, a kind of protective device that forms when something is cut. The body memory of supporting this person, solid like the thick trunk of that pine, ever present as the ache of denied history. For now, her youth buying a kind of latitude that would come due later, her arrogance and acquired sophistication filling the void where self-esteem should be. Me standing at the sink as always, washing her dish as she looks down her nose, laughs and moves away.
Now through the green forest I see the red of Dave’s truck as it bumps along the hard-packed snow road to the back pasture’s summer kitchen. Smoke will start to rise from behind the sheltering evergreens soon and the friendly squeal of the chop saw start to punctuate this quiet morning. The hard-working husband will head out to his workbench across the dooryard and take the dog, throwing a ball or two along the way, with the consistency of rain. And most likely I’ll push off from the desk after writing, take up the bitter with the sweet as I always do, but on this day settle deeper into life without a question for love, just a prayer.
The jays pretend not to see me because they own the place. They believe the feeders strung all around this huge wooden house are their right, not their privilege. My husband plays into this by chastising himself should any of the stations be forgotten, even for a day, and the seed receptacles gone empty. He tells me no one likes blue jays, and so my secret love of them must go unnamed as I watch them move with the determination of kings from branch to sky, seemingly impervious to the gusts of intoxicating mountain wind. Not like the little chickadees my husband favors, their reliable songs coming from everywhere, unseen and delicate, like clockwork, their small bodies working with.
And so I got a letter from an old friend with whom I’d worked for many years in musical collaboration. Out of the blue these things can come, on a seemingly random day or despite mercury in retrograde. People have free will that defies all restriction and at any moment an impulse can turn the status quo on its head. Her message stepped outside into the wilderness of the future, to create it, to embrace it and take me along. It was a gift of heart and these are the steppingstones of our lives.
Same day a family member didn’t call or finally did, too late. My tender regard for her already hardening off, like sap on the outside of a pine tree. Just a different manifestation of love, not as warm or flowing, a kind of protective device that forms when something is cut. The body memory of supporting this person, solid like the thick trunk of that pine, ever present as the ache of denied history. For now, her youth buying a kind of latitude that would come due later, her arrogance and acquired sophistication filling the void where self-esteem should be. Me standing at the sink as always, washing her dish as she looks down her nose, laughs and moves away.
Now through the green forest I see the red of Dave’s truck as it bumps along the hard-packed snow road to the back pasture’s summer kitchen. Smoke will start to rise from behind the sheltering evergreens soon and the friendly squeal of the chop saw start to punctuate this quiet morning. The hard-working husband will head out to his workbench across the dooryard and take the dog, throwing a ball or two along the way, with the consistency of rain. And most likely I’ll push off from the desk after writing, take up the bitter with the sweet as I always do, but on this day settle deeper into life without a question for love, just a prayer.