Skip to main content

To lose my edge

  I asked him a simple question: "what's your biggest fear concerning us?" He couldn't answer, although I know he has at least one. We were driving this morning when I asked, and the thought popped into my head in a continuation of the conversation we had the night before. I told him that there is a small but significant part of me that worries one day he'll decide he's done. For whatever reason, one day he will walk.
  But I guess in broad daylight he couldn't figure out his biggest fear. I think his answer was something about kids or something I couldn't assuage. That was my goal, anyway, in asking. Goal diverted.
  He came to tuck me in, and tell me what he had just spent the last 2 hours talking to my cousin about: "you," he said. "How much I love you. How much I want to be with you forever. You're independent spirit, how I'll said you'll change." I internally bristled. I am proud of my independent spirit. "Oh yeah? Hmpf." That was my reply. "I thought that might shut you up." I know he meant that in jest, but you know me...if I feel affronted I will lash back. "Now I'm just trying to figure out how to shut you up." That was me lashing out. He hugged me tighter and said even though that hurt I still love you.
  There was silence. I had nothing to say to that. Nothing that would make him feel any better. I had negated all he said concerning his feelings for me and concentrated on the part where I would change. "I finally have an answer to your question." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what my question was. I asked. His response: that when I ask you to marry me, someday, you'll say no. And if we get past that and you do say you'll marry me that you won't walk all the way down the isle. That was his fear. Again, I had nothing to say. He spoke to the back of my head. I did not turn around. I shushed him and he held me tighter.
  Now that he has gone to bed and I'm awake, I can't think of why that entire exchange happened the way it did. I think I have come to the conclusion that I have spent entirely too much of my life building myself one way that to lose that part of myself would be to lose my edge.
  But I am realizing that edges hurt. People get cut on them. He gets cut on them. He bleeds. He gets hurt. Again and again. Perhaps changing and smoothing out that edge isn't a bad thing. Perhaps it's part of growing up and growing into someone else. Perhaps I can change. There is this part in my favorite poem "The Hound of Heaven" "My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me/And smitten me to my knee;/I am defenseless utterly." I am feeling hewn, or perhaps I need to be. My harness is my edge. My harness is my coldness. My harness is my defense against abandonment. And I fear, when it is completely hewn from me... I will lose me, or perhaps be afraid of what I might find.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tiger must stay in your backpack...

   I'm not that parent. The one who gloats too much, and shows off all the pictures. The parent who relays every detail of their kid to let others know how incredible I think they are. Perhaps it is a flaw. Who knows. And I also pride myself in not being a helicopter parent. I teach and let go. I discipline and let go.    And I thought I would be ready for this: first day of Pre-K. I have been very positive and uplifting and have wanted my son to be extra ready to go to school. We have talked about it for months! I am ready... Or so I thought.  This morning, as white boy was leaving to take them to daycare, he said to Owen, "You can't take Tiger to school tomorrow or he will have to stay in your backpack, so do you want to take him to daycare today?" I thought little of it, but as Owen threw him down on the ground and turned to head out the door, my throat hitched. "Are you sure you don't want to take him today?" He said no. It was a sense of finality.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more

60 years ago is not the 1940s

  When you are born, you are lucky to get one day a year to celebrate just you. Well, you and all the others born on that day. When you become a mother or father, you get another day for just you. Sometimes those days come when you are not ready, and some come when you wish they wouldn't.   Today, 60 years ago, my mother was born. A date that means littler to most people I know than to her or me. As we age, and my mother is no different, our birthdays become just another cycle of the rising of the sun and a following of the moon. Nothing to make a big to do of.   My mother enjoys subtly. She can be dramatic but embraces the subtle acknowledgement of herself. She has ALWAYS placed herself second and counted the accolades of her children as if they were her own. That was one thing my mother NEVER lacked: humility. Which made me often sad she didn't get more than 2 days a year commemorating her.   Mom, I know I've come short. I know that I have openly and often faile...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sacred Requiem

  He handed me the hymnal and asked me if I was ready...if I could do this. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never planned a funeral, and even if I had imagined planning one it sure wasn't this early in life and it sure wasn't for my only brother, my only sibling. At 25, I felt like a little child getting left behind in a sea of strangers. I was terrified.   2 days prior, my heart stopped beating. 2 short days before this, my peaceful world collided with the dark. And now I had to prepare for the world to say goodbye to greatness. The tree fell in the woods and the world shook with its sudden end. And we, as the collective, needed to imagine that very tree as the beautiful piece of woodwork it now was and bow to it's new exulted shape.   I wasn't sure how to plan a requiem. But, it had been placed in my hands and I wanted to give him the best I could. He deserved it. He deserved life...to live...to breathe still and chase every dream he thought into...
Post a Comment
Read more