Southern Cross

The kids at beautiful Sebago Lake

The glow of love I had going yesterday carried over to today. I got up to see our host off to work, did a little yoga, and then woke up my kids for one more day of adventures in Maine. I felt positively pumped to be alive today, and I marveled how much the feeling of loving and being loved by someone just makes everything brighter. Although I hate like hell that it's unlikely that it's going to be him I get to love and be loved by for the rest of my life, I did make room for the possibility today that it is the love (not specifically the person) that is making me feel so damn good today.

We'd heard this song when the four of us were driving earlier this week, and it came back to me today:

(Around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl
(Who knows she knows) Who knows love can endure
And you know it will

I do. I know it will. I wish like hell I didn't have to let go of this love, but I do. We've had a lot of good talks, and it is clear that there isn't another option, at least not right now:

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin'
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

Nope, it can't be forgotten. And it won't be.

I don't know what the Southern Cross is, but I'm using it here as a metaphor for fully, completely, truly, madly, deeply loving someone, which I've done for the first time with my favorite New Englander:

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day

So I'm sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a dyin'
And my love is an anchor tied to you tied with a silver chain
I have my ship and all her flags are a' flyin'
She is all that I have left and music is her name

Think about
Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin'
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten

(I've been around the world) I have been around the world
(Lookin') Lookin' for that woman girl
Who knows love can endure
And you know it will, and you know it will yes

Oooh ...

So we cheated and we lied and we tested
And we never failed to fail it was the easiest thing to do
You will survive being bested
Somebody fine will come along make me forget about loving you

He tried to tell me that -- the last line -- when we were talking by the Ocean at Acadia. But I told him I disagreed. Someone fine will come along and love me, and I'll love him, but I will never, ever forget about loving the magnificent creature that I've had the tortured pleasure of spending one last week with:

At the Southern Cross

Teach Your Children

For the last handful of years, I've been working through some pretty painful, long suppressed issues from my childhood. The desire to continue to move through them both motivated me to sign up for the silent retreat and provided a great deal of anxiety about what I'd have to face on that cushion with none of my usual distractions around to call upon when the going got particularly tough. And indeed, at times, it has been really, really tough. For the first 24 hours or so, I used one of my favorite distractions: thinking about someone else's issues and how I might be able to help them heal. (I'm particularly adept at focusing this kind of energy on the men in my life - after all, I spent my childhood hopelessly devoted to trying to cure what ailed my father.)

With the compassionate guidance of the person leading the retreat, I watched myself not dealing with my own issues, and gradually, I began to settle into my own body, my own issues, my own healing. And what I found, when I did this, was not scary at all -- and not tough in the way that it had been in the past when my mind had the opportunity to keep me in unproductive loops of the past, my identification with it, and its ability to determine my future.

Quite the contrary: what I found was a deep well of strength, an unshakable peace, and a whole bunch of compassion for myself, for my parents, for my sister, and for all others who've entered into parenting roles without being whole themselves.

My Mom, who turns 66 today, was pregnant with me during this Crosby, Stills and Nash performance. As I continue my own healing journey, I'm going to keep returning to both the challenge and the reassurance I find in these masterful lyrics:

Teach your parents well

Their children’s hell

Will slowly go by

And feed them on your dreams

The one they pick's

The one you’ll know by.

Don’t you ever ask them why

If they told you, you would cry

So just look at them and sigh

And know they love you.