nothing breaks you like love

friday, july 1
venice, california

nothing breaks you like love...and if indeed the heart was made to be broken, what better teacher than the love of a child. a love that from it's beginning is meant to elude and beguile and shape shift into a becoming thing. at times as soft as a lamb and other times as shattering to illusion as a sudden hurricane or shipwreck. the shipwreck of my love, my bones broken, my pride out of joint. and still, how would i have known how deeply i could love and let go if it were not for you, my son who can touch my heart so tenderly and intimately, who grew in my own womb.

i taste my own tears and still i am grateful. and still i rejoice at the shining bright thing of your independance and free will to choose. i would chose many lifetimes again, even frought with suffering and self doubt, to spend another mundane moment basking in the beauty of you. to sit, maybe even just watching reruns on tv, and to feel the life that lives inside your tanned skin and the life that moves like a river between us. a mother and a son. how many times have we told this story?

i remember when you were still small, brown as a chestnut, with golden curls. i was alarmed by how lovely you were. with big black eyes. when you were small enough to cuddle still, you used to curl inside and spoon me and we would lay like two question marks in the bed, lingering somewhere between waking and dreaming.

i remember the morning you woke me up weeping. you were five. you said you were afraid of dying, of being forgotten. and that was the beginning of our separation. i could no longer be the sun for you. i could no longer fix everything for you. this was bigger than a band aid and kiss on a bloody knee. it is a big world and i am only a mere mortal myself. still wrestling with the same question of living and dying and loving. some say we experience immortality through loving, through creating children who carry our lives, memories and proof of existence on after we have died.

what is my legacy to you?

for the god of small things,
for the god of forgiveness,
of families,
of forgetting,
of forgiving
worthy or not
i fumble for your grace