Layers of Light

About seven years ago my wife and I decided to color outside the lines. Who knows what saner people would have done, here we are. I finally realized a year or two ago (slow learner, this boy) that given the inner and outer conditions, everything I’d ever done in my life was absolutely guaranteed to happen. This is quite a revelation. If I’d bumped into it years ago, I’d have had a lot more fun along the way.

I can hardly imagine it now, blowing up our old life like we did. Remember though, it was guaranteed to happen. HAD to happen, too, absolutely did. The other day my wife told me about hearing a quadriplegic author interviewed on the radio. He said something like, “When I broke my neck, my soul began to breathe.” I immediately thought of several apt comparisons, but prudently thought to keep them to myself. There’s a tolerably large truth in there, however.

But somewhere deep inside me, something was continually unwilling to let go, even though I thought I had. A recipe for issues, yes’m dandy, and a revealer of same. Hanging on to a remembered security of identity, I guess. An inner association with a place I loved but had to leave, a little campfire in the blackness, a worn-around-the-edges kind of “security” I kept because I was afraid I wouldn’t find another. Fear of spiritual poverty, perhaps.

When my wife would grow sad or talk of what she missed, I’d see my own doubts reflected in her and rail against them. I didn’t know I was looking at myself, either. This is the psycho-hygienic equivalent of pointing your finger at your wife’s face and saying, “Hey! You didn’t shave this morning!” Makes about as much sense, too, and you can guess how that makes someone feel. You’d better, anyway. Trust me.

Life in an old adobe, 2006

So she’s taking advantage of a chance to house-sit for some friends in June, go back to the old haunts for a while. For several reasons (see above) this was driving me nuts, you might say, at least three days per week. One imagines this and that that hasn’t happened, then steps outside and sees the light. Relaxes a bit, then has another handful. Up and down and all around, takes a lot of energy. And then it hit me why it is you can’t go back, and what it is about old friends.

The thing I held onto in my head just isn’t there any more. I’ve tried to understand the yearnings and nostalgia — when I have them — and put them in some kind of rational context (“this is really how it was”), but I just can’t. If “the way it was” existed, maybe I’d want to go there, but it’s gone. Maybe one reason I couldn’t acknowledge this was because it seemed to be the equivalent of rubbing out people and things I loved and missed. The birds, the water … Of killing me, too, because the little campfire would go out, and a part of me would be all alone. But my friends are still there. They’re still my friends, and the geese may still come back in the fall. It’s the scene I remember that doesn’t exist, that unique combination of the way we were inside and how we rubbed against the banks of the river as we flowed along. The moment, actually. The “then” that was now.

So I’m good. I swear though that I only fully grasped this very afternoon, after nearly seven years, that what I’d been secretly afraid of losing was really and truly gone. Naturally that had the wind blowing through my chest for a few minutes, and then I loosened up, expanding.

Suddenly I didn’t mind anything so much, and my honey floated several inches off the ground.

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