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The kids return from NYC today, after a week with the soon-to-be-ex inlaws. I have suspected that this will be the last time they'll make such a trip, in spite of everyone's good intentions and proclamations that our moving away wouldn't change anything. It's just a feeling, a sense of things that aren't being said. I'm always good at picking up on the signals, but not so good at deciphering them. It's that language that his family uses, the one that exists in the spaces between the words. It's almost always easier for people to let things go, even important things, than to struggle to keep a hold on them as they change and become different than what we knew. I wrestle with this all the time, the complexity of that dynamic, the difficulty of knowing when it's better to let something slip away quietly or when to fight to keep a piece of it.
As for him, I let go almost immediately, after the initial struggle to keep him in my heart. There are certain things that people can do that cause them to cease to exist in that place, and he did them all. I think of him now as a person that I have to deal with for a limited amount of time with regard to very specific issues: selling the house, divorce agreements...he has become nothing more than legal paperwork to be filed, terms to be gone over and then put away. I give him no more thought than this, without the shroud of longing or regret that I wrapped everything in before I came home. It all seems so completely foolish in retrospect and I find myself sheepishly laughing at how my love for him could so quickly turn to apathy.
For all my foolishness, though, I have learned important lessons. I have learned to give my feelings time to manifest themselves without letting them pull rugs out from under me. I have learned that it's possible to simply be and enjoy without plotting a course by which my desires should propel me. I have learned to let life unfold a little on its own.
Life these days is full of water, sun, moon, and stars. The grey-eyed ram comes calling, wearing the Capricorn moon like a big white hat. He cooks for me and we talk about books. We hold hands and try to remember all of the constellations we have both forgotten over time. He reminds me that life is sweet and gentle, something that I'd forgotten over a winter of nothing but hard edges. Something that I needed to remember in the flesh, in the movement of bodies and the quickening of breath.
Passion and peacefulness sustain me during these hot summer days, like a big bowl of ripe berries laden with fresh cream.
As for him, I let go almost immediately, after the initial struggle to keep him in my heart. There are certain things that people can do that cause them to cease to exist in that place, and he did them all. I think of him now as a person that I have to deal with for a limited amount of time with regard to very specific issues: selling the house, divorce agreements...he has become nothing more than legal paperwork to be filed, terms to be gone over and then put away. I give him no more thought than this, without the shroud of longing or regret that I wrapped everything in before I came home. It all seems so completely foolish in retrospect and I find myself sheepishly laughing at how my love for him could so quickly turn to apathy.
For all my foolishness, though, I have learned important lessons. I have learned to give my feelings time to manifest themselves without letting them pull rugs out from under me. I have learned that it's possible to simply be and enjoy without plotting a course by which my desires should propel me. I have learned to let life unfold a little on its own.
Life these days is full of water, sun, moon, and stars. The grey-eyed ram comes calling, wearing the Capricorn moon like a big white hat. He cooks for me and we talk about books. We hold hands and try to remember all of the constellations we have both forgotten over time. He reminds me that life is sweet and gentle, something that I'd forgotten over a winter of nothing but hard edges. Something that I needed to remember in the flesh, in the movement of bodies and the quickening of breath.
Passion and peacefulness sustain me during these hot summer days, like a big bowl of ripe berries laden with fresh cream.