2008 has been the year of the good old-fashioned cosmic whooping. It has whooped my ass. And each cosmic spanking has come with one message. Just one: Let go. Let it be.
"Jesse is an idiot," I say. "How can he not love us? It's one thing to not love me. How could he leave Jonah?"
Let go.
"Jesse doesn't deserve Jonah's love. If Jonah only knew the main reason why Jesse left," I retort.
That's okay. Let it be.
"How can Jesse be okay with things and be his normal, unmovable, cheerful self? If I give in and be nice to him, then it's like he's won."
So fucking what? Just worry about you.
This is difficult work for me, this letting go. I'm a holder-on-er. I hold onto things. I hold onto hopes, dreams. I hold on for dear life, lately, it seems. If life were a rope and my hand were grasping it, my mind and eyes could logically look at it and make my fingers pry open and release the rope. Not so, now.
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This past Friday, I asked Jesse to take Jonah and me out to dinner to help relieve my cabin fever from a week of being snowed in and with little human contact. I longed for adult company, and Jesse is good for that. His cousin, David, was with us. I was in a friendly mood, conversation flowed, we all had a great time. On the way home, Jonah seemed unusually content. Maybe it was my imagination, but I wondered if it was because we were all together. At one point on the drive home, I jokingly rubbed Jesse's bald head -- one of my old habits of endearment -- and Jesse reflexively reached over and kissed me. Now it was my turn to wonder about David, our backseat observer. Did he think that was odd? Did he and Jesse talk about it later? Did David say, "Dude, what the hell are you doing? Look what you're giving up?" I'd like to imagine he did. Sigh.
From there, we took a detour to view some neighborhood holiday lights. And again, Jesse absentmindedly placed his hand on my knee. I let it rest there just long enough. With the slightest, almost imperceptible knee twitch -- my way of saying, "Um, okay, what are you doing?" -- he pulled his hand away and I sensed a shift in his demeanor. Maybe Jesse is also dealing with his own version of letting go, which is odd to me, given that he seems to have a supernatural gift for not knowing how to hold on.
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The next day during Jonah's bathtime, we were playing with some plastic containers that he uses to scoop up water. Each small cube has two holes in the bottom to allow water to trickle through. I filled one bright green cup with water and held it high in front of Jonah's face, so that he could see this little trick. He immediately stuck his hand under the water's flow and tried to grasp it.
Try as he might, he couldn't, of course. This frustrated him, but he still regarded this phenomenon with wonder. Then he got an idea: he tried to catch the stream with another cup, a blue one:
The problem was, that cup also had two holes in the bottom, so the captured water just trickled on through. At one point, Jonah just accepted this fact and happily moved on.
At the risk of pointing out this painfully obvious parallel, I know I've got to do the same. Maybe I won't do it happily, but I know I've got to keep letting go. Maybe this blog is my blue cup, my way of capturing what I do not understand and try to make sense of it. It's dawned on me long before this that humans are the only species that has to analyze and make sense of things. Look how far that's gotten us. In the end, the chain of events are not affected by one's analyzing. They flow on and on, with or without us.
Just let go.
I know that Jesse and I have a love for one another. I do know that he loves Jonah. I just know that he's incapable of loving how I need him to love me. I need, I want, more in a man. There will probably still be the accidental pecks, a misplaced hand on the knee, hugs that linger a bit too long. And, I'm sure there will be miscommunication, misunderstandings, misgivings. That's okay, too.
I hope I can take a cue from Jonah, and in the end, just enjoy the sensation of this life, this river, flowing over me. There's no stopping it, and who would want to? Even with all the what if's and why's, life -- with all its grace, its pain, its love -- is too beautiful to contain.
Listening to: Tender Blind Spot by Peter Mulvey.
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