Love Gift

If you haven’t read any Anne Morrow Lingbergh; do- she was a lovely, lovely writer. We were fortunate to have heard a passage from Gifts From the Sea at a friend’s wedding and were thrilled to incorporate it into ours 9 wonderful years ago. At the time I loved the island imagery but still instinctually fought against the whole concept of letting go, letting be. I’m a nostalgic, sentimental creature by nature. My instinct is to hold on and hold on tight to that which I love. It is my life’s practice I suppose. I was unfamiliar with any Zen writings or concepts at the time we chose this for the wedding, how beautiful to see the Zen spirit in which she writes now. Any work that you can read and reread and glean something fresh is one to keep on your shelves- or is it one to let go…

Gifts from the Sea- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Morning Hug

Sestina for
the Working Mother.
BY DEBORAH GARRISON

– – – –

 No time for a sestina for the working mother.
 Who has too much to do, from first thing in the morning
 When she has to get herself dressed and the children
 Too, when they tumble in the pillow pile rather than listening
 To her exhortations about brushing teeth, making ready for the day;
 They clamor with goodbyes and “up” hugs when she struggles out the door.

 Every time, as if shot from a canon when she shuts the door.
 She stomps down the street in her city boots, slipping from mother
 Mode into a commuter trance, trees swaying at the corner of a new day
 Nearly turned, her familiar bus stop cool and welcoming in the morning.
 Standing here quietly she hears her own heart, though no one else is listening,
 And if the bus is late she hears down the block the voices of her children

 Bobbing under their oversized backpacks to greet other children
 At their own bus stop. They too have come flying from the door,
 Brave for the journey, and everyone is talking and no one is listening
 As they head off to school. The noisy children of the working mother,
 Waiting with their sitter for their bus, are healthy and happy this morning,
 And that’s the best way, the mother knows, for a day

 To begin. The apprehension of what kind of day
 It will be in the world of work, blissful without children,
 Trembles in the anxious and pleasurable pulse of the morning;
 It has tamped her down tight and lit her out the door
 And away from what she might have been as a mother
 At home, perhaps drinking coffee and listening

 To good radio, what rapt and intelligent listening
 She’d do at home. And volunteering, she thinks, for part of the day
 At their school—she’d be a playground monitor, a PTA mother!
 She’d see them straggle into the sunshine, her children
 Bright in the slipstream, and she a gracious shadow at the school door;
 She would not be separated from them for long by the morning.

 But she has chosen her flight from them, on this and every morning.
 She’s now so far away she trusts someone else is listening
 To their raised voices, applying a Band-Aid, opening the door
 For them when the sunshine calls them out into the day.
 At certain moments, head bent at her desk, she can see her children,
 And feels the quick stab. She hasn’t forgotten that she is their mother.

 Every weekday morning, every working day,
 She listens to her heart and the voices of her children.
 Goodbye! they shout, and the door closes behind the working mother.

Zuzu's favorite literature

On fridays I’ll put up some of my favorite poems, essays, sayings, lyrics, etc- and in honor of the lovely welcome from my new blogging community and specifically the wonderfully warm welcome into the community of families touched by Down syndrome since The Quail has come into our lives I’ll start with this oldie but goodie!

From a Karen Kerney watercolor. This beautiful poster is a collection of simple suggestions that will help restore our eroding sense of community. Virtually everyone can do most items.Text reads…