Joy: Yesterday, I shared with my mother the awe-inspiring sight of overlapping mighty gray and bright white cumulus clouds, against shining blue sky. Yesterday my mother lifted her blue-green-gray eyes and gasped at the sky and put her hand to her mouth, something she hasn't done in months. Then we smiled at each other completely. All our love is in this.
How to explain what it is like to love someone when all context is gone? I love her because of the past, yes of course, but I love her too because of who she is in this moment. Almost more than ever, for disappointment and expecation and roles are gone.
Does she think me her daughter? Her mother? Does it matter? And who is she to me? No longer parent, certainly still family, somehow become native country. She is my native country. More than the country where I was born or the one where she was born.
I weep for missing her active daily presence in my life, but I weep more at the beauty of the grace of learning to love someone so purely, the grace of being loved with the shimmering, penetrating embrace of innocence and complete acceptance.
I wish you all this grace, though it tears life open, though it breaks one’s heart completely, for it is the crack in the earth which reveals all the diamonds.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
How to explain what it is like to love someone when all context is gone? I love her because of the past, yes of course, but I love her too because of who she is in this moment. Almost more than ever, for disappointment and expecation and roles are gone.
Does she think me her daughter? Her mother? Does it matter? And who is she to me? No longer parent, certainly still family, somehow become native country. She is my native country. More than the country where I was born or the one where she was born.
I weep for missing her active daily presence in my life, but I weep more at the beauty of the grace of learning to love someone so purely, the grace of being loved with the shimmering, penetrating embrace of innocence and complete acceptance.
I wish you all this grace, though it tears life open, though it breaks one’s heart completely, for it is the crack in the earth which reveals all the diamonds.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
