Rhythm of Love

This song's been drifting around in my head since before I arrived in Hawaii this year, and yesterday my friend and I heard it on the radio in the rental car. It's the last day of my trip, and I'm feeling a whole bunch of things this morning, but mostly, gratitude. This year, I have many of the same things to be grateful for as last year -- a sense of calm brought about by the ocean and five days of yoga with other open-hearted people -- but this year I'm feeling extra grateful, because I've got more to go home to than I am leaving here, and that's not how I felt a year ago. In part, that's because I spent my last few hours on the island last year saying goodbye to my windsurfer.

And it was goodbye -- we only knew each other's first names, and when he asked about keeping in touch, I refused. In part, I made that decision in the same spirit in which this song was written:

And long after I've gone

You'll still be humming along

And I will keep you in my mind

The way you make love so fine

We may only have tonight

But till the morning sun you're mine all mine

Play the music low and sway to the rhythm of love

Plus, I told myself and my friends, not living for the emails or phone calls and then facing the inevitable dwindling would ensure that I'd always remember our time together for what it was - a transformative meeting of souls and bodies -- but not try to make it into something it wasn't likely to be (ok, so I happen to have a close friend who made a 14-year age difference and an intercontinental relationship work, but let's face it, that's not the norm). "I know myself," I remember saying, "I'm a junkie. I'll just be jonesin' for it all the time." So I cut it off, in a move that felt strong at the time, but with a year's distance, feels more like fear. If I wasn't willing to keep in touch, how could he reject me?

So I went home, and for days, I did my gratitude meditation in the morning, and when prompted to picture someone I love, someone who opens my heart, I'd picture his strong body on his board, and the way he'd told me it made him feel, and I would cry, cry, cry. I'd remember him saying, when we were in bed together: "Sarah, your mouth is smiling, but your eyes are not." And then I would cry some more. I didn't just cry, though. I also broke up with the guy I'd been dating for eight months, the guy who'd never noticed that my eyes weren't smiling. How could he? His own eyes were dead. He didn't have that passion for life that my windsurfer had.

During those meditative moments, I'd recall his tenderness, and vow that while I might not get to be with him, I could use the knowledge of the way his way of relating to me felt to help guide me to a more fulfilling relationship.

And I did, in part, until the same wounded girl tried to cut off her love with her New England flame for the same reason -- to avoid getting hurt again. Luckily, I had a bunch of good friends to keep me honest, friends who knew that talking myself out of love was something I do to protect myself but not something that ultimately serves me. That, and I'd seen the way my eyes looked in the mirror when interacting with my current love: more alive than ever before. And that's worth staying open for -- even if it did mean the possibility of getting hurt.

It's a good thing, too, because one night with him just wouldn't do -- I reckon I need a whole lifetime with this one...