Insouciance

She lays her eggs in the split open twigs of a tree, they hatch and fall to the ground, and they live buried in the dirt for a time, a few years, many years.  The larvae emerge from the ground, molt their exoskeleton and then spend the rest of their lives singing in the dog days of summer.  I listen as they sing Hakuna Matata, as they sing Que Sera Sera.  Me?  I sit on my front steps as the amazon prepares to paint the last bits of my house, coffee in my hands.  Feeling awkward as the dog sniffs her purse which she has left on the lawn.

I am fretting, I am fretting my house.

I look down and see a cicada larva on the edge of the concrete steps.  Hey there little guy, I say, that doesn’t look like a safe place to lose your shell.  I wonder if it hurts to lose your shell as I reach down and gently pick him up.  I place him in the palm of my hand, and he goes wandering on me, navigating the ravines of my fingers and the slope of my arm.  I feel his legs pricking my skin, I look at his face which I find to be an alien beauty.  The Japanese make kites that look like cicadas.  I had my kindergarteners make cicada drawings based on those kite designs, and then color them in brilliant fluorescent colors contrasting with the dark crayons left in the bottom of the bin in May.  I wonder if they are hearing the cicadas now and remembering, as I am.  I put him in the yew next to the steps and he quickly moves away from me.

Cicada drawing black micron pen.

Do not worry the house, do not worry.

They say that people come into your life when you need them, and leave again when you do not.  I am contemplating this notion as I sit here.  The recent difficulties with a relative who was to help, the friend whom I have managed to blow off intentionally and not, who has been angry with me for not renting her time share though it would have financial wash out, and a destroyer of time for us.  And just when I had extended a hand, and she had accepted, the relative made the promise to work and didn’t but by then I had already cancelled plans yet AGAIN with her, I tap my coffee cup with the tip of my finger, click, click, the argument with the pirate, the final straw of this friendship, and who knows what other repercussions collateral damage.  I think of Patricia and how she left once and came back in.  I want to go and see her.  I do not know when.  I think of this relative, and I feel justified in my anger.  I know as friend lost says, you should let it all go, but am I not allowed a choice as to when?  Am I not allowed the time to grieve?  Am I to paint a smile on the plastic doll face of my head and pretend that everything is okay?

There is a woman at work who is always cheerful, and she puts sparkle and sunshine on everything she encounters, putting a happy spin on everything.  Don’t be a Nelly Negative.  I don’t trust her.  A cousin tells me, in the additional radioactive fallout of the whole help me fix the house debacle, to put a smile on my face and make nice.  I think of the little girl in my daughter’s first grade who called my house at 5am, repeatedly, and when I hung up, she called back again.  Later, on the bus, she hit my daughter, the social worker told my daughter that she had to be friends again with this girl.  Make up and be friends she told her.  Be civil indeed, but friends?  With a girl that lies, hits you and harasses you?  Put a smile on my face though I am scrambling like a mad woman to get all of this done?  Can I not just get it done first?

Why do we tell our girls to make nice?

This friend of mine, she is posting endless things about how you have to face your problems with a cheerful demeanor.  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.  Get over it, stop having a poor me party.  It makes me sad that we don’t allow ourselves the time to grieve, to be sad.

How many days on end did I cry until I couldn’t anymore?

I am not saying I am sad all the time, I sit on the back porch the chimes singing in the breeze, the cicadas, the chirping cardinal, I am deeply content at this moment; art has been made, knitting started, afghans half sewed, books completed.  Though I am fretting the house, though I am fretting my slovenliness these weeks.

Am I also not allowed anger?  Am I not allowed worry.  Am I not allowed a year to cry every single day if that is what it took to get me from there to here?  Even if I have not fully let go of the sorrow?

I watch the cicada nymph as it navigates the needles and the spiderwebs and the sharp twigs in the yew, soon he is lost from my sight I wonder if I should look in the yew for his shed shell later, and then for him, giant and sparkling green with black lace wings, face even more beautiful in its strangeness.  Some take 2 years to get here, some take 17.  Does anyone ever stand over the dirt where the 17’s are buried and scream make lemonade for Gods sake, pull yourself out of the dirt by your bootstraps, it been 4 damn years already?!

I sigh as I take a sip of the coffee.

I wonder, what will this day bring?  This moment was a gift.

What does it mean to be “In Love”

The moth wants to fly to the light of the moon, but instead it flies to the lantern as it flickers in the night, to the porch light as it shines brightly waiting for a loved one to come home.  It uses all of its energy to get to a light that is too bright, to a light that unlike the cool light of the moon, will burn it, singe it’s tender wings.  A match is lit, and it burns brightly, quickly consuming the small fuel of its stick until there is only singed skin, the match has gone out.  Another match is lit, and it instead is turned toward a well set fire.  Dried grasses and bark and small dry twigs at the bottom, larger twigs criss crossed or towered above and a small dry piece of wood ready at the side for when it catches, and later the larger logs that will burn longer and late into the night.  The dry grass catches, it is like the flame of the match, it can burn quickly and go out, or it can catch and then move on to the small twigs.

In love is the match, in love is the moth singeing its wings on the porch light, in love lights quickly and burns out long before anything real can be made or built.  In love is like lighting the match before the fire is set.  In love is the husband who comes home and uses it as an excuse to leave his family for another.  In love is what teenagers say because of the lust that surges through their bodies.  In love, in this cynics opinion is for children and the weak minded and the weak of spirit.

A mother is not in love with her child.  She will love that child, if she is a good parent, from the first moment she feels it kick in her belly, until her last breath.  A child will love their parent, from the moment they look into their eyes from the breast until the their very last breath.  A person loves the feeling they have when surrounded by their family, people they fight with and sometimes hate, people that they stand back to back with, and love, people that share experiences and a demeanor that only family can know.  They are not in love.  In love is for people who are not a part of you, in love is for people who walk alone and for a few minutes of their lives touch another, but whenever it suits them, in love leaves you.  It flutters helplessly against the burning light, and fades just as the sun is rising.  Real love is like the sun, it burns brightly, it is hidden by clouds, it lights the moon, it provides nourishment, and days at the beach, and the sparkling pollen soaked glistening trees after a hard afternoon rain.  Real love is not extinguished, it is as sure as the rising and setting sun.

For me, I do not want a match or a moth or a badly tindered fire.  There is a moment by a campfire, when the laughter has faded, the songs have been sung, the memories have been shared, the plans of the day to come have been made and there is only the souls that shift quiet like in the darkening night.  The stars twinkle, and the fire crackles, and the last flames are flickering low and deep inside the fire there is are embers glowing red and black and grey.  A moment when your face is warm and your toes are so hot that you have to move them, and your back is chilled so you turn it to the fire, and turn back again.  This moment where your own serene solitude is unbroken and at this moment, what you wish for is a face full of wrinkles to be looking back at you.  You are not just lovers, not just friends, not just companions, not just a partner, but you are family.  And for all the rainy days and thunderstorms, for all the hurricanes and floods, for all the scorching days and sweltering nights, for all the perfect days, and after rainstorm moments of your life you wouldn’t change one single thing except to have spent more time together, and less time arguing about the little things.  And when that wrinkled face smiles back at you, with their own thoughts and memories, and their own ugly voice, and their own voice of reason and their own inner light, you accept that face exactly because of all of those things.  And that face as it looks at you with the eyes now failing and the farts that let go of their own accord, and the warts that grow on the knuckles, and the nose picked perhaps not clandestinely enough, it accepts you right back.

This is love.  Not “in love”.

Love is an ember that burns long into the night, and if the wind is right, and the fire is banked well, and the rain holds off, that ember will be the coal that relights the fire in the morning.

I never want to be IN LOVE again for the rest of my life.  But someday I hope to look into the fire and see that ember, to look across the fire and see those shining eyes, and that wrinkled face.  And in the morning when my old bones are creaking, I want our weathered hands to touch.  And to not even have to say the word love to know it is there.