Ceiling Gazing

Here's a holiday tradition I love: the menorah

My first love (who lives in England) sent me the link to this song yesterday. He's been going through some rough stuff with the possible end of his marriage, and I have to admit that when I first heard that I thought, maybe he can come visit and I won't be sleeping alone during the holidays after all!

Ah yes, the holidays. Even the most enlightened among us can long for everything to be picture perfect this time of year, and let's face it, at least in my book, sleeping alone ain't picture perfect.

But that's ok. Because it's not really about being picture perfect, it's about being perfectly present, and I'm doing better at that than ever before.

One of the things I'm realizing, with this greater degree of presence, is how much darkness the men I've loved in the past carry with them. Which is no accident: A wise woman I spoke to last week told me that when I fell for men with gaping wounds, I did it so that it would be ok for me to have a gaping wound. Which makes a ton of sense.

Now that I'm further along in my own healing, I'm ready for a man with more light. But until I'm lying next to him, I'll be just fine doing some ceiling gazing on my own:

Laying in my bed, ceiling gazing
Wide awake with jet-lag from Australia
Got a stack of mail, and a wedding invitation
From a new, young relative I never even knew

Got me thinking about my grandpa for some reason
Met him half a dozen times in a nursing home
The last time I saw him, he was in a box
And they were lowering him into the ground

St. Mary's Church stood so high
It was the first and the last time I saw my dad cry
The ground had a thin coat of snow,
And we wondered off in the cold.

It's 3:47 AM June 13th
It's my sister's birthday today, I think
Gonna give her a call, and see how she's doing
She had a rough divorce, I hope she's improved

I wanna reach out, and give her my love
Put a smile on her face, like when we were young
Listening to records from the library
Hermit of Mink Hollow and Dreamboat Annie

She lives with her daughters, all alone
Across the street from a cornfield in Ohio
One's four, one's seven, and I love them so,
I wanna live a long time, and see them grow.

...with no love beside me, and no dog asleep at my feet:

Outside my window tonight
Sausalito's twinkling lights
My love's beside me, deep asleep
Dog is laying between my feet

... and yet with so much to write in the gratitude journal that I keep next to my bed:

Outside my window tonight
A cargo ship's cruising by
And I'm so happy to be alive
To have these people in my life