*
My fingers feather touch
Across your cheek gliding
Your lips on my face
Knowing heaven
Here on earth
*
Your breath whispers
Against my neck
Hold me long enough
So love reaches
All of us
*
Our words dance joy
In daylight starlight
Laughter jewels the air
With possibilities
*
The talon grip
Of history’s wounds
Love’s newborn flesh
Old armor donned blinds
Insight hiding truth
But a moment
Love hopes
*
*
If you want forgiveness brothers and sisters you’ve got to forgive
If you want love in your hearts you’ve go to love no hands asking
If you want someone holding you then do some holding of your own
If life was fair brothers and sisters we wouldn’t be where everything’s real
*
If pain sadness tears your soul’s seams brothers and sisters breathe
If kneebuckling heartbreak shoots you down cold shoot love in return
If wounded hearts wound yours send kindness their way
If the choice is delivering a blow or offering a hug go with this last
*
If like me you’ve been knocked down and blown out don’t give up now
If you’re tripping on shattered dreams rubble trust sunrise on the morrow
If you’re broken sad let the tears come breathe deep gentle and slow
If you think you’re nothing left think again you’re an angel I promise
*
If you think you’re nothing you’re wrong I swear
If you’ve stopped hoping for tomorrow rise up and hope again
If you lost the magic child within open up and look again
If you’ve stopped dreaming then ratchet up and dream again
*
Great news! I found us! You’ll never believe where we were! And you’ll never believe that we, so I learned, have the ability to alter our size!
So last night I go to bed and call Charley and he nestles up in bed next to me. I pick up the Tolstoy biography and start reading. Well, you know like when a dog hears something before you do? Well…Charley’s head pops up, ears perked. He hears something. But not something outside, something from the closet next to your bureau. Of course the first thing I think is, Sonuvabitch mice! I put the book down and listen. At first I don’t hear anything but Charley’s still all ears perked and head tipped. Then I hear it a faint sound coming from the closet. It sounds like two people giggling. Tiny giggles (which sounds like the song Don Ho never sang ’cause he probably knew better). Then there’s tiny conversation in tiny voices, not unlike the sound of your voice when Skype tampers with it. More giggles, then the giggles stop and again I hear tiny-voiced conversation…then tiny panting, tiny heavy breathing…then. Suddenly I get a little bit scared thinking maybe I’m having an acid flashback and it’s all in my head but I quickly realize that can’t possibly be because Charley’s still listening to the same thing I am and tilts his one way and then the other as he listens.
I get out of bed and, quietly as I can, go to the closet door, take a deep breath and open it. There we are! In a tiny bed on top of the things in the closet both naked and cuddling (of course we both covered ourselves with a blanket when big me opened the door)! We looked like we usually looked, really happy together. Then I hear Charley from behind me clear his throat. I turn and look at him. Then, he speaks, in a real human voice, “As long as you two remember to live that part of yourselves and not let it disappear when yuz” (He said yuz, he’s got New Yawk roots!) “is working through the hard stuff yuz will be fine and spend the rest of your life together happy very happy! That, and make sure I’ve got me some milk bones or fawgeddaboutit.” I said, “Say that again.” He just barked. I turned around and we were gone from the closet. I closed my eyes, shook my head, opened my eyes and I was lying in bed next to Charley with the book about Tolstoy resting on my chest. Now…I know it wasn’t a dream. In fact I know it was real, in fact I know it was a miracle. And that doesn’t surprise me because you, my beautiful angel, are a miracle – and so are we.
I love you my whole wide world.
Yesterday I had the chance – and very real pleasure – to talk with a woman that used to be my girlfriend and is, I am very happy to say, my friend. It had been awhile since we’d talked because, as happens between friends from time to time, honest misunderstandings stumbled us up a bit. There are certain indelible truths about this woman that anyone who meets her would be wise to make note of. She is intensely courageous. I’ve seen the courage she brings to life’s challenges up close. The specifics of those challenges have no place in this missive because it is not my place to talk about them and, she is my friend, which means I won’t tell you.
It nearly always makes me shake my head with sadness when I see people trying to manage their lives by spinning webs of misinformation (or telling outright lies) rather than staying on the path of honesty. Yes, this latter is not always easy, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that honesty is a powerful ally. As one who lives a sober life, it is an ally I have no intention of betraying. The woman I spoke with yesterday is cut from the same cloth. She is courageous, honest, and, it must be said, the kind of mother to her two daughters that every child deserves.
Those managing their lives with dishonesty often attack and villainize the ones who love them the most because the ones who love them the most hold them accountable for their choices. Those who love them are wise not to lash back in kind. Pray for the person you love and hold them accountable. Stay out of the poisonous web of deceit. It is not healthy for you. Equally important, it is not healthy for the person you love who may genuinely no realize honesty is one of his or her best allies. The most painful experience for those of us who love someone who manages life with methods short of rigorous honesty is we oftentimes need to disengage from them. And loss, even when necessary, is painful.
Thankfully, none of this holds true with my friendship with the woman I spoke with yesterday. Talking with her was a breath of fresh air, it usually is.
If you love a person who is caught up in an unhealthy lifestyle like this, leave the door open. People truly can change. It is hard work, not easy, and takes courage. But if you love them, they deserve a second chance. People gave me a second chance (and then some) after I got sober.
You reach a point in life, I have, where you just say straight out what it is you have to say, response be damned. I do know what I want to say here, I only hope I am able to say it. Let me start with this. When life inflicts pain on me to the point it buckles my emotional-knees and takes air from the room it is not lost on me that I have the power to leave this life if and when I choose. It is not a top-of-the-list choice for me, but it’s one I’m acutely aware of and, at times hold fast to. Sometimes enough is really enough.
Some years ago a close friend of mine, a woman who faced a challenge with weight, told me some of those who put on too much weight do so to protect themselves, to keep others at a distance. Over the years I’ve recognized a plethora of habits and behavioral idiosyncrasies in people, behaviors, that do exactly that. I call them distance makers.
It is unlikely I am saying something you don’t already know when I say intimacy can be scary. It can feel, for very real reasons were one privy to the details of someone’s history, life threatening. So, believe me, it is not as if I don’t understand the existence and need for distance makers. I have enormous compassion for those whose distance makers protect them (or so they believe) on the one hand, yet rob them of much of the life experience they deserve to have on the other. A closer examination reveals yet another prevalent pattern when it comes to distance makers. The distance makers that applied yesterday may not apply today. In fact, what once protected you in life may now pulverize your life and, not at all incidentally, pulverize the lives of others. In one of his letters John Steinbeck wrote, “We’re creatures of habit, a very senseless species.” He was right.
Distance makers are like anything else, there are healthy and unhealthy ones. Principles come to mind. People espousing racism and other forms of bigotry are not going to be found in my personal life. Nor are those who are active alcoholics, addicts, people who are violent (emotionally or physically), and so forth. But then there are the unhealthy distance makers rooted so deep in the fear of loss or fear of being hurt – physically abused, raped, shot, stabbed, assaulted – again! that we miss the mark and drive off the very people who love us the most.
I’ve seen friendships, relationships, and marriages shattered to pieces by distance makers. Like anyone my age, I’m 60, I’ve experienced my fair share of loss. Losing someone I love from my life immobilizes me more than anything else I think. Takes the air out of the day. When someone I love dies, I swear to God there is less sun in the sky for a time. Sometimes I think the sun itself is mourning. Losing someone I love as a result of unhealthy distance makers is brutal; the word pain doesn’t come close to covering it.
Beware the distance makers, they may rob you of the life you want and deserve to have. Getting back up gets harder not easier over time, at least it gets harder for me.
Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 