No one can be your anchor because anyone can change. But you can tie yourselves together to change together, like boats on the same wind. The other can't be your point of reference, but you can build a beautiful space between you. I heard someone call it the zimzum.
Maybe my picker was broken because I always looked for a fixed point, someone who seemed steady and didn't change. But people who don't change are the same who don't grow, don't repent, don't like all the new-ish ideas constantly popping into my head. I had this romantic idea of being the kite and finding someone to stand on the ground holding my string.
In the short term, I wrongly assumed your dad would be my anchor. I thought his quietness was strength and bottomless immovability, but it was also fear and insecurity and a little unkindness. In the long term, my assumption of his strength saved me when I learned to lean hard on him, when threw myself into his arms, tested and pressed him with all the contents of my heart. But do we discover one another, or do we make one another?
I cannot yet tell you objectively what and how I was. I can only tell you I am not the same. Perhaps some small essence of me sits in my brain, but even that is plastic. I cannot change the lilt of my voice when I comfort my babies--it was ingrained before I can remember, a copy of my own mother. And my predisposition to seek novelty, I believe, is in the biology of the body I was born with.
But many things I thought would never change, have. In order to distance myself from the necessary creativity of poverty, I started wearing more plain beautiful clothes instead of the wacky upset ensembles of my youth. It's silly, yes, to talk about clothes as personality... I suppose that belief hasn't changed!
I am less full of fear than ever before, and yet, when fear is upon me, I am more objectively aware of it. When we were first married, I would provoke him to connect to me by getting angry, crying, making a scene. But if I look at those two kids with some compassion, whenever he showed a little kindness, all her terrors of abandonment came to the surface. The kindness must be too good to be true. He couldn't understand it--neither could she--and he chalked it up to sabotage.
But now everything I see and feel becomes wider and wider, sometimes in traumatizing suddenness, like walking from the cave into bright sunlight. And almost every expansion is plagued with guilt like I am breaking someone's heart. Well, less guilt now. I see the bittersweetness of change.
Yet, although I do not believe in the constancy of personality or belief, yet I still want to be your point of reference. I want to be your light house and haven, the keeper of Home, where you are always loved. Even though I don't believe in constancy, yet I want to be constant for you.
Perhaps this desire glimpses the necessity of God. Why do I long to be constant for you if there is no constancy in the universe? And why would we have this innate ideal of eternity? Why would we long for immortality if there's no such thing? He has placed eternity in the hearts of men. Faintly, I hope so.
I hope there is a Constant in the universe. I hope there is more consciousness after this short sweet life, even though having one's ashes unceremoniously flushed down the nearest toilet seems most logical. And I hope there is more because, at my end, I want to be able to say to you, I will never leave or forsake you, and for it to be really true.
But if these hopes are folly, I am beginning to see there is still plenty to be thankful for, and each day has plenty of delight of its own to carry us along for now.
When I was twisted up inside with pain, I overplayed the hope to take my mind off the present. But now that I'm learning how to take care of myself, I am not waiting for a magic spirit to blow in and distract me from my pain. Sorry, Holy Spirit, whoever you are. I don't mean to disrespect you. I hope you are much more than a fairy.
Little girl, my love for you makes me feel bad that I do not love my sons more. I do love them fiercely! But my love for you, my little mirror, is unique. In you I see so many opportunities to love the little girl I was, even though I sometimes worry this is unhealthy. I try to take it as an opportunity to reflect rather than project.
And in you, little mirror, I remember to cherish the best parts of me, to love myself. If you are so lovable and precious, maybe I can believe I am as precious as you.
Daddy hoped to avoid all this with another boy, but I knew you'd be a girl, and I knew you would melt his heart. And I am learning that I can melt his heart too.
