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Yearly Archives: 2012

His my first. The first one we came up with. The first one bestowed upon us. The first one who pressed through and was laid into my arms.

He appeared and was ready for everything the world might throw at him. He seemed not to need me except for sustenance. Father was his obsession and I didn’t quite know what to do with him. Still don’t and yet I understand him like the sun and moon and stars. That little ball of fire grown tall now and growing closer to a man. Where does the time go? They warned me and warn me still. It goes, it goes, it goes…

He was never one to come often or quick and I did not hold as tightly then, back when I was younger, more restless, unaware of life’s scheme’s and tricks. Still he makes me paper chains and hand carved gifts. What happened to the building of last year? Content then to dabble in scraps. Now he is on to buildings and grandiose ideas, frustrated at his lacking and I fear growing afraid to try. How to give him the skills and still leave the room to grow?

Some days, some minutes, he drives me to the brink. Why are the letters so hard and the chair so slippery? Sitting quiet an impossibility. I ask him to hold the pen in his hand, not to touch, to think as I do and focus… And I don’t treasure who he is enough.

Who he is. The little man who runs into life, away from the center into the fringe, the wild parts. Will he rip my heart out? The little boy who flings himself head long into all that is dirt and wild, light and life. At home in a tangle of plants, charging up mountainsides, with wind and tide, finding all God’s creatures.

He brings me these things I do not even wish to hold, would never even see. He brings them and I recognize all that I need. His hands full of life itself, my one desire. Him doing at a quarter my age things I would never conceive.

I clutch at goals, manuals, steering wheels. I hope I have not failed too badly. He has never been one for hugging, but he brings me treasures. What I did not know I must have. Red hair and dirty hands, my uncontainable  love.

We will be ten years this summer and the day of hearts and love is now upon us. I can’t untangle it all. I can’t get through his birthday anymore without crying out a mess all over the kitchen. My man’s birthday, the day we made him, when his short life began. And now St. Valentine’s Day, the day before I found out he was living inside of me. A seed newly planted and all seemed love and hope and our union flowed out easy into children and fruitfullness. Our bodies young and dreams still fresh. Falling easy into sheets and running fast even on the cliff’s edge.

And where are we now? Groping about in the dusk for the hand we used to hold sure? Still his smell is like home and and I know every inch of his arms, strong shoulders holding us up. I grasp the three, boy’s bodies strong as spring plants, holding onto what we’ve made, what we’ve been given. Our glue and still they threaten to swallow us up, to make us into only mom and dad, without a trace of us… Don’t look at me like that, don’t pretend you don’t know. If you say you have walked through years with a lover by your side without once knowing these days, these thoughts – I don’t believe you. I don’t.

But everyone maintains perfection and so I hide my grief, my passion, convinced it’s an indulgence, an inconvenience. (til it spills out ugly) Selfish at best, shameful at worst. Do you know this? What lies deep in your heart, a longing, a wound? Why don’t we offer it up in beauty? I regret the days gone by of simple color in the sun. I draw back when I see the shadows lengthen and fret about what will come. Until I hear other’s stories, flip through artist’s photos… challenges met, beauty unfolded, black and white prints, powerful images. The fight, the argument of dark and light holds more power, more passion than any breezy sunny day. Chiraoscuro, the play of light and dark – art school term, 90’s song – a way of life?

If you truly have not yet met the storm, I do not wish it on you, but it will come… and I tremble to think of other’s battle’s so much more fierce than mine. As I sink into shades of black and white, the children they paint my days, splashed violently with life that even color can’t contain. Until finally I am surprised by slivers of sunshine peeking through the grey, slanting through window panes and onto white sheets. Glimmers of fire smoothing onto skin holding on for dear life, prayers whispered for peace. I see the light rise and I realize the grey is not dusk but dawn, eternal dawn and the Son has come into our shameful midst. He has come to knit our hearts back together and I wish I could silence my tongue and surrender my heart and lay down my body once and for all.

I can’t, but He has.

And so I hold the hand of my friend, my lover. Never to let go. I drink in the sweet smell of boyhood alive in our home. I cry and laugh and try not to screw it all up and cry and laugh some more when I do. And I thank God for bleeding hands and broken bodies and how He knows all my pain and foolishness and will not abandon me to it.

I thank God for Love. And I thank one man for the black and white script of forever and I do.

I pull out old photos and revel in the rich beauty of their age. Faded layers tell the story truly.

I photographed my friends’ family awhile back. As I drove home the light was golden and I was excited to get to the beach and capture it washing over them. The beach had other plans though and the fog rolled in unannounced. Stepping out onto the sand we ventured into a world wrapped soft in white. I tried to snap a few shots with a decent ISO that they could use for family portraits. Then the light beat a rapid retreat into sublime anonymity. My camera searched and found only soft suggestions of their form and shape, spots of color floating in the wilderness of wonder. I didn’t really look at the pictures much when I got home, afraid I had failed her. Finally I took them out this week, all covered in haze . . . I edited the few sharp ones and then I gave in, embraced their beauty, stepped into the fog and was overcome . . . I could never have created these, now my favorites, the blurry ones, piled layer upon layer of mystery, saying those things I can not say . . . in them I see me, and the dark, the light, clinging to a family and resting in the love, motherhood all wrapped round the edges with mystery  . . .

Thank you to my friend, her family and the fog.

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