Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day 🖤 whether you are in a relationship, single, middle ground purgatory or simply complicated (le sigh), I really hope you savor the day. I mean, every day, but this day is a good reset for remembering to do it on the daily.

As a romantic person who has had a closed door on romantic love for, well basically forever, I knew quickly, young, that if I wanted those experiences I would have to do them myself. Hopefully with a partner one day, but if I had waited for that specific relationship to do anything in my life, I wouldn’t be here.

That’s why you see me being ridiculous on a Tuesday lunch, a cocktail at night, elaborations instead of quick and convenient. Cigars outside for hours to let the mind wander to the vast galaxies in my mind. I want the seconds to last longer and moments to fill my body until it overflows. Make the table. Invite the friends. Take the trip. Buy yourself flowers. Hike to the waterfall. Chase the sun. Read for hours in bed and run the goddamn bath. Follow the pings, that intuition. Make and do the things for yourself that you want to do with someone.

Say the things to the people when you feel them. Be scared and let them in anyway. Lick the wounds and embroider the scar when your light reveals the shadows they’re not ready to work through. Love your community. Let them love you. As much as it makes you want to vomit, keep your bleeding, bruised, godforsaken heart open. Make your life the one you’ve always wanted to live. And love anyway

Mamsie and Me

I feel the weight of having a Mother I love. I feel the weight because her age is now something that doesn’t seem to match her. I feel the weight because I do not live near  her so the making of memories is far and few between and I have begun to have anxiety that I won’t have enough stored by the time it is too late. I begin to feel a murmuring panic that I don’t have children who get to experience all that she has to offer at this age when she is still her own and in all transparency I feel a small vein of jealousy for my unborn children because of their cousins’ who get Mamsie in her glory days. I feel everything to the bone and I feel her, in ways difficult to express but churning just below the surface.

I feel the years of toil in her hands. Her strength in posture perfect back, watching her navigate life with an innate gracefulness I wish could be taught. The joy in her eyes when engaging with another human who was formerly a  stranger. The beauty she sees staring at a face wrought with more wrinkles than hers. The tiredness as she sinks into her bed and whispers a poem she wrote about such an action when I was 7.

I can hear her voice reading aloud or telling stories, instructing life lessons in what I thought was just an evening spent baking a pie. I feel the afternoons of trudging off the bus with tears streaming down my face because of a nonchalant insult that sliced more deeply than the deliverer even knew and her waiting with open arms and never ending advice of “stand up straight and ignore them…inner beauty shines through more than outer beauty…even if they are unkind to you, you need to be kind to them.”

I recall her silhouette, in that early pre-dawn getting ready for the day. Darkness flitted through my dreams so I was never one for sleep, her grace letting me wander through the jewelry boxes on her dresser, asking questions and being intrusive or sleeping in her bed in hopes my imagination would quiet and a few hours of rest could be had.

I can feel her gentleness with the spirits of everyone she has encountered, no human has withstood their own barriers in her presence and I shudder with shame the number of times my eyes rolled as she thanked an aging veteran or told another elderly woman she looks just like her mother. Her ease of laughter, that gasping, breathless laugh which eventually turns into a cry and I think makes her the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her faith is palpable because I can feel it; see it. Every morning on her knees, reading her Bible, tending to others, praying in those hushed moments when stillness emanates throughout the house. Her patience like a blanket, enfolding around me even as mine wears thin. 

Her curiosity is an experience shared, whether it was stopping by the side of a road to see what kind of flower was growing there or her allowing us to do “experiments” in the kitchen or try things we had never done without so much as a “it probably won’t work, or that will get messy.” Her penchant for cultivating and growing leaves of green also extending to the people around her. Her denial is sweet, but a resounding truth is that she has lived an intentional and brave life.

I yearn for and ache for her nurturing, the innate essence of Mother bestowed to anyone crossing her path. Human or animal, her ability to see beyond the shell that encases a spirit is grounding. The hierarchy in the animal kingdom made no impression on her as a snake deserved to be nursed back to life as much as a baby kitten or rabbit. Her hands brushing my hair and back as I need comforting, her body intuitively forming to mine for a hug that neither of us chooses to break.

Never one for demanding luxury she certainly has never received it and her grace in that acceptance is in itself humbling. The “make do” and “there are people who are living in worse conditions” mantras were always given a seat at our table, her defending that she will be in heaven one day and it all doesn’t matter. But sometimes it seems closer, in stolen moments and light that only those on the receiving end can see.  

What if I see glimpses of heaven now?

Photography by: Ashtin Paige - Nashville TN

http://www.ashtinpaige.com/