I fall in love everyday. There is something, someone every day that is new and lovely and amazing, loveable somehow. Today, I am in love with my daughter's metallic pink fingernails with sparkles that I so meticulously painted, my other daughter's beautiful oragami card for an injured classmate, the white orchid with petals that literally sparkle on our bathroom windowsill that Dean gave me for Mother's day and has been the only orchid I've ever kept alive this long.
The things we love, well, they take tending, they take care, they take notice, they take time.
I just feel like it's not fair. I've loved things, loved people, animals, hell, even the weather on a particular day and it is all so fleeting. Even these beautiful, dark-eyed, dark-haired exotic creatures that are my children- it has gone by so quickly. It reminds me of a book our teacher read to us in school called "Eric" by Doris Lund. Ms. Lund's son died of cancer. I recall, even now, all these years later, a part where she mentions what a miracle his life and death were but how much he would take with him, behind his brow, in death that neither she nor anyone else would know.
Sometimes it feels too much, like I cannot possibly contain all the love, cannot possibly tell them, or Dean how much I've loved the moments. It seems unfair that I can love so many people ad things this much. It seems unfair that love can come and change me so and then go and sometimes I have no idea of the deep and beautiful color their thread has added to the tapestry of my life. It seems unfair that love has to be so limited in some cases, that we are not allowed to acknowledge certain threads, even if they still are there, running among the others, however quietly blending now, but there nonetheless.
I don't think I'm different. I think we keep loving what we have loved. I can still revel in the memory of smelling my daughter's hair, just a week old, nestled in my arms- that love is as bright a thread as any other. I can remember the love behind my words as Dean and I were married, me in my barefeet, under an ageless tree in our backyard. But what of other loves? And the dark threads? Are we just supposed to pretend we don't see them, do they simply become part of a senseless background- the textile version of sfumato, distant, unclear, misty and grey. I know they cannot be cut out without the rest of it all unravelling.
I don't care what some people might say. I still see those deep blue threads, the golden ones that glint and sparkle in the sunlight. And is it fate/God/the universe weaving our threads together? Or just us, master artists of the tapestry of our lives? Or is it just random? I like to think it is a combined effort, that some threads are the warp that was always there, always meant to be there- even if it changes color or texture. Then we supply the weft- sometimes the shuttle flies and sometimes it slows. Threads break, mistakes are made. Ultimately, I think what I want is to both be happy and make those I care for happy. It is difficult when you care for the world but maybe that is the nature of my warp.
That reminds me of the persian mistake mythology- that those who made the meticulous creations we loosely call 'persian rugs' purposefully make a mistake, an acknowledgement of humility and deference, that no one is perfect but Allah. I don't need to intentionally add mistakes to my tapestry. They are there, regardless. Some, I've tried to go back and undo. Others, I only realize with the perspective of time that what I thought was a mistake added to my tapestry, even if it wasn't what I had planned.
I admire those who have the skill to weave or knit or sew or write or whatever, having the patience to go back and find dropped stitches or cut the thread knowing it means starting from behind again. Some people dedicate their entire life to a single hobby or two, perfecting it, grasping for more and more perfection over the years.
I suppose I can relate to that through the horses- but really, the training and riding, it is just an excuse to love. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I still dream I am competeing in an event, flying over jumps, my heart pounding and hoping for those moments when my horse and I become one, indivisable being. Those moments are about relationships. Thinking of that makes me sad, though, too. I think we should have moments like that with each other, with other human beings and there seem to be so few in my life right now.
I was IM'ing my friend Aileen who used to take care of Viola when she was going to school here in the US (she is originally from Eastern Germany where she only ever saw green oranges at the store, from Cuba, until after the fall of the Berlin Wall). She was a college student, a few years younger than myself. We've kept in touch over the years, here and there. I helped her with an applicatioon to a program in Amsterdam? I think it was, I got a card from her with pictures of her surrounded by small African children from the orphanage where she was volunteering. Now she is a wife and a mother and we keep up on facebook- how amazing is that? People can complain about how technology has isolated us, but it has also opened the world to us in so many ways. (It is all about balance, my friends, after all Dr. Suess said it best "...and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act." Balance, my friends). (And since this is all for you, my girls, balance is so important. It is why I always told you to take the F if you really felt like you didn't want to do something, because time is far too short and there is much for you to do.)
Aileen is now living in Namibia and I jokingly suggested that they might need a horse trainer since they have a massive farm and tourist business they run. She must have been part of my weft, as I know our threads were meant to cross. Can I really pack my family up and move to Namibia? Will Dean really have the courage to pursue a position with his company in Switzerland? It makes me wonder what is part of my warp, what will happen, regardless of the colors or speed of my shuttle? How will the rest of my days be colored by the weft of my choices?
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