This one is not for my husband – the man I wake beside each morning grateful, still, all these years later; the man who eats chocolate chips with me, surreptitiously, after the kids have gone to bed, the one who will talk me down from any ledge or out of any whirlwind of “should haves, would have’s, what ifs” – every time. This is not for the man I married, dark and handsome and mine. This letter is not for him.
There is more than one way to love, thank God. This letter is for my friend.
The one I hold next to me of late like a ghost, there through a veil. This is for that friend. Or, for any friend you’ve ever loved, the old one, the new one, the one you will find soon, and keep always. Here goes.
Dear friend, consider this letter a wind-bleached white shell left on your porch rail as early morning barely lifts, sky-cupped, full of light. It’s good luck to write on seashells and we need all the luck we can get in this life that may be holy, but is also a crapshoot, after all. We know this now.
We are busy.
We are overfull in a multitude of ways.
We are overtired, overwhelmed, overindulged.
The veins of our days carry us – the beat of children, husbands, wives, partners, work, school, money, health. I make this list sound trivial. It is not. Theses things are important like blood and air and rain. These things force movement.
But, your day-to-days have halted in the startling way of dangerous weather: flat winds, lightning too close, cyclones, or ice storms setting up one after another and hitting hard. You are trying to absorb changes deep and unfair, absorb changes unwanted and unwelcome, absorb changes that slay you.
There is nothing harder.
And in the midst of this, for what it’s worth, I love you. In the midst of this, it is not just me. You have not forgotten everything; you must know there are many of us. I see a quiet army, lined up, row after row. This letter is from them, too.
We want to tent you and keep anything that lurks, away. We want to touch you to save you and we can’t. You know you can’t always save the people you love; we are learning it.
And with that lesson comes anger. We’re mad about what’s happened to you, mad at no one in particular, mad at lots of people in particular, mad at the world, mad at God. We are furious and burning. And we know our pain can never touch yours. We cower at this, then square our shoulders, are madder still.
We will rail, if you want us to. Or listen while you do – at anyone, at everyone. At God even. He is strong. He can take it. The blows bounce off, become healing, become, eventually, and perhaps long-off, a sort of near peace.
We are here – ghosts ourselves, loyal, though sometimes from behind the steering wheels of our cars, or desks, or from across oceans or states or small ponds full of kids and fish. We mean to be near you. Our intention is constant and vigilant.
We would gladly carry you, catch you, lift you up, make it better, if we could.
Picture this. You are curled sideways on a bed, the low light of almost evening moves toward your house. It is quiet. Children down the street alone and full of play call as they ride bikes away. Tomatoes wait on the counter in a too-small bowl. You are walls and blocked ladders from sleep, yet bone tired, surrendered, still.
You are alone; though picture us curled around you like “C”s – two of us at your back, two at your front. We fit together like the fingers beside each other. We will hold you up, or hold you still, or hold you steady.
This is your trial, your path, your hard duty now. We breathe with you. Can you feel us?There – right there. That’s us. Breathe.
I am driving. On my left I pass a “Pick Your Own Raspberries” farm. Years ago, I took my sons to this very farm. It was one of those Stuart Little moments of promise, tin pails knocking against knees. They took off running.
I could hear the buckets ahead of me as the boys clanked up the rows of canes looking for a place to pause and pick. “Over here!” they called. I rounded the corner, and saw what they were oblivious to: a very angry woman three bushes from them.
Berry picking, to her, was terribly serious. My idea of sticky handed kids licking berry juice off their fingers (which they were doing) and her idea of competition over who would get the best berry-picking bushes couldn’t have been more opposite. I ignored her as best I could.
I drive past the farm today, alone, and turn south. The roads in this part of town are an odd mix of rural and city. Gas stations, a large high school, homes, and a small clapboard church with a slide-letter sign on the front lawn all meet the dirt shoulder. The church sign changes weekly. Today the words say “God sees everything. Be Afraid.”
Across the street from the sign slouchy teenagers, outside on class break, drink over-sugared sodas pumped too full of caffeine. Hair hangs in their faces except when they throw their heads back to laugh. Some of them drag heavily on cigarettes, already adept at the stylized mannerisms they’ve copied from ads. A boy and a girl, both impossibly thin because they’ve grown so-suddenly tall, drape on each other like two wet shirts on a single hanger. They kiss.
I think about the sign and wonder if it is meant for the high school kids, though I doubt it. I wonder if any of them are doing drugs, having sex, driving too fast, or drunk, or without their seatbelts. Are any of them are stealing, cheating, lying? “God Sees Everything,” the sign said. “Be afraid.”
I drive on, listen to the radio. It drones news:
The last of the Bulgarian dancing bears are in sanctuary, their freedom purchased. Lifelong they were forced to stand on hot coals, shifting their weight back and forth in a futile attempt to cool their paws. Thus, they learned, with a metal leash-ring inserted in their snout, to “dance”.
God sees everything.
The West Bank simmers and sparks mayhem, electric as a live wire in rain.
Snipers are bent to the ground in Iraq – ours, theirs – pointing guns at each other as they have been told.
In Darfur, children with bottoms as sharp and thin as elbows balance, hungry, on their feet in the sun.
The Lark Bunting population in Colorado is down, since the 1960’s, by 64 percent. We cover the birds’ grasslands with driveways.
We yell, too often. We take too much for ourselves. We are shut down, turned off, or simply absent from each other. We lie. We judge. We cheat. We steal. We are not always good. In my life, mistakes, like planks on a wharf, lay a path over what quickly becomes very deep water. Sometimes I am not good at all. Perhaps I should quake in my boots.
I think again of the raspberry-lady and her view on berry-bush entitlement– how we could think so differently about the same thing.
Considering all the nonsense of The-Crazy-World-Today, my sentiment is not unlike the church sign. I’d just add one word, one hope, one saving grace: God Sees Everything. Be not afraid. Sometimes we mess up badly. But, being afraid just makes our mess deeper, darker, and more hopeless. God isn’t vengeful, people are. He doesn’t try to scare us silly to control us, people do.
Big Bad Scary Guy is not a role that suits God. He’s better suited for love, peace, gentleness, forgiveness, do-overs. When we cry, He’s beside us weeping. When we run away, He’s far ahead keeping eye. When we hide, He’s all around us, waiting.People who try to scare you into hopelessness or repentance? Ignore them as best you can.
