I'm sitting on the deck outside the upstairs bathroom right now. I'm in my underpants and watching a gamboling humdinger of a lightning storm roll in. Except for the glow of this here computer screen, it's great. Ah the clouds just broke!
New scene: I'm lying on the floor beside Muffy's crib. The window here faces a good part of sky and its proximity to leaves creates ocean sounds out of the wind. You could be anywhere if you are here. Sailing the high seas in your underpants, guided by glowy screens instead of a sextant. Too poetical, maybe. How about I'm just here. A Helen in a rainstorm in the dark in her underpants and the front is passing through and my babes are all asleep. And where I am is good. It always is, if I make sure I'm fully there. <--That right there is a whole other topic for another post. Today is for writing about days of many days.
You have those days of many days, right? So full of moments and conversations, adventures and tasks, that they seem like many days. Today was one of those. A week's worth of connections (some half made, maybe, to be picked up later), struggles, and just goodness and laughter, skin and the smell of children's hair on hot days, smiles from former students, oh and the disappointment in myself for forgetting one of my special one's names. To be fair, he graduated two or three or four years ago, but I still should have remembered. Even in the half light of the parking lot, I could see his disappointment. Poor kid. He was a bright spot in my life that year, too. Now he will think he was just forgettable, but he wasn't!
The point is that I like the fullness of days like this. I want to relive them sometimes, so I could space all the moments out and savor them a little longer. Let the flavors roll around in my mouth before I swallow. I listed some of them in my paper journal and more came and bells rang and a half list remains.
Last night, Chris and spent a few hours on the front porch after the kids were down. In the course of our excellent, meandering conversation, we talked about how there are people in life we love but don't say it to. Here's one of those times when I especially sympathize with men because our world makes it harder for them to verbally express love to friends. But even as a woman, there are many relationships that ARE love, but the love isn't spoken. It's too bad.
Remember those times when you were dating and you had that talk-- the one where you finally said you loved the person? And your heart was beating in your throat somewhere and you weren't sure what they would say. Part of you wanted to splash into a puddle on the floor and the rest just wanted to sing it out because it was real and it was love and you felt it. Then you said it and you emptied and filled all in the same three syllables. It really doesn't even matter how the other person responded because you said it. You sat down and intentionally stated the words, eyeball to eyeball. No casual "love ya." The real thing.
I wonder why our friendships don't tend to give phrase "I love you" the place it deserves. We might say it, eventually. Your friend gets the flu and "Oh no! Is there anything I can do? Feel better! Love you!" or after a heart to heart you say goodbye and "Thanks for listening! Love you so much! We need to get together more often!" There's no denying that these are beautiful expressions, but I wonder what it would be like if we took the time to sit down with friends and confess our love. I've had two friendships in which we did that. One was a little more complicated of a relationship at the time, but that conversation solidified our friendship and gave it a foundation that has allowed it to last almost two decades. The other was just a pure and simple long-time friend. It felt so good to say the words in a serious way. I LOE you. (That's an inside joke, not a typo). And to hear them in a way that was intentional instead of in passing. It made me love that friend even more just knowing that we took the time to say it in words.
There are a lot of people in my life who I do love. I'd like to challenge myself to say it more. To get over the fact that people just don't do that very often and get over the fact that it might be weird. Frankly, if we all knew how loved we were, we'd probably go about life with more kindness, calm, and a generous humility that comes from feeling sure we are loved. I challenge myself in this way knowing that I will still probably wuss out for a while. I mean, I love these people and the last thing I want to do is alienate them with declarations of love. But then, who keeps their light under a bushel basket, right? Can I get an AMEN?
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