Photograph

Enjoying the paddleboat at our cabin!

Today my son and I spent another 5 hours in the car -- this time en route to his friend's family cabin in Western Wisconsin. Google maps told us it would be 4 hours, but we got lost. So did a lot of other people at the party, as it turned out, so that made us feel a little better.

We listened to the radio most of the way, listening to mostly old songs but also some newer ones. We also talked. I told him that I'd communicated with the New Englander and learned that he was headed to a wedding of a friend this weekend. And then I told him that for years I've thought that the New Englander would find himself at a wedding and think something along the lines of:

"Holy shit! I had this amazing woman and we had this incredible love and she wanted to get married but I didn't realize how good we had it and seeing my friends together, embracing their love and embarking on this path, really makes me wish I had decided to do that with this amazing woman whom I loved so much."

I didn't actually say all that to my son, but you might as well know that's pretty much how it goes in my head. What I did say was something more along the lines of "I just don't know how you walk away from a love like ours, and I always wonder if going to weddings makes him regret leaving."

My son said he didn't think it was a good idea to think about that now.

Methinks he is right.

Cue one of the many love songs we heard on our journey today:

Loving can hurt
Loving can hurt sometimes
But it's the only thing that I know
When it gets hard
You know it can get hard sometimes
It is the only thing that makes us feel alive

We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
Times forever frozen still

So you can keep me
Inside the pocket
Of your ripped jeans
Holdin' me closer
'Til our eyes meet
You won't ever be alone
Wait for me to come home

Loving can heal
Loving can mend your soul
And it's the only thing that I know (know)
I swear it will get easier
Remember that with every piece of ya
And it's the only thing we take with us when we die

I too believe that loving can heal, that it can mend your soul, and that it's the only thing that really matters in this life.

We keep this love in this photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Our hearts were never broken
Times forever frozen still

But I don't want to be in the pocket of anyone's ripped jeans. Because our hearts were broken. And time didn't stand still:

So you can keep me
Inside the pocket
Of your ripped jeans
Holdin' me closer
'Til our eyes meet
You won't ever be alone

It marched on. Bringing healing. And also, in fact, a lot of time alone. Just enough to make sure I've got space in my heart to fall in love for real again...