July 2010

You'll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes,
when my job's done, you'll be the one who knows.

It’s almost ten o’clock at night, and the midsummer sun’s remnants are still visible on the horizon behind the hill. I’m watching thousands of fireflies light up the garden around me, like an entire constellation of stars, winking at me from the universe of our garden. I’m perched, like some intergalactic traveler, on a garden bench that commemorates the 39th wedding anniversary of our dear friends; we inherited it when they passed away, just days short of their 60th anniversary together. Behind me, a crazy rooster statue stands sentinel—a gift from my father in recognition of my desire (that D assures me will go unfulfilled) to have a flock of urban chickens.

The beauty of the night, coupled with the wine from dinner and the recent convergence of Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, and my dad’s birthday, have me thinking about all those relationships that touch and form our lives. Parents, siblings, neighbors and friends. Children, or in our case, nieces and nephews. Each of those bonds form us, just like the stars formed images of hunters and scorpions and water dippers for our ancestors anxious to find meaning in the world around them. Like those ancients, we’re all looking to understand our place in the greater scheme of things—family, community, the cosmos.

Time it was I had a dream, and you're the dream come true.
If I had the world to give, I'd give it all to you.
I'll take you to the mountains; I will take you to the sea.
I'll show you how this life became a miracle to me.

D has lost both of his parents now. I sense his loss on certain days, at certain hours, by the look in his eyes. Last weekend, I ran into an old acquaintance at a party, and she told me her father was in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and that her mother had fallen and broken a hip; so my friend and her husband moved her parents from Florida back to Pittsburgh, into my friend’s home. “We thought there were just days left for Dad; he wasn’t eating and his body was shutting down. But once we got him up here and set up with hospice, he rebounded.” Indeed, he looked robust and healthy sitting at a picnic table under a canopy at the party. But I saw the ambivalence—born of a deep love for her father—in my friend’s eyes. Her father was gone, and had been gone from her and her family for years because of the effects of his disease. And yet, there he was. And yet…

All the things you treasure most will be the hardest won.
I will watch you struggle long before the answers come.
But I won't make it harder--I'll be there to cheer you on.
I'll shine the light that guides you down the road you're walking on.

I start counting the myriad fireflies, whispering grateful prayers for the positive influence my parents have always had on me and my family with each tiny twinkle I count. I remember a note I received not long ago from a former neighbor, gently taking me to task for an unkindness that I’d committed in this space a few months back. She wrote as a mother looking out for her child. Never mind that the child is old enough to have children of her own. A parent’s work—or a friend’s, a son’s, a partner’s—is never done. Our bonds and obligations to each other travel with us throughout our lives. And beyond. Out into the now-dark summer sky. Above the invisible clouds, through the thinning atmosphere, into the great beyond.

Before the mountains call to you, before you leave this home,
I want to teach your heart to trust, as I will teach my own.
But sometimes I will ask the moon where it shined upon you last,
and shake my head and laugh and say, “It all went by so fast.”

You'll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes,
when my job's done, you'll be the one who knows.

--The One Who Knows by Dar Williams, American singer/songwriter