Deep Love

I wrote the following piece close to four years ago, soon after I started my blog. I'm not where I was then (maybe I am and I don't know it yet) :^) but thank god I still know now what I was learning then.

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I'm sorry if I haven't been around much. I should be back soon. Thanks for stopping by here anyway :)
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Love

kj

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Deep Love
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I sometimes quote my favorite line from Paul’s Simon’s “The Boxer”—the one that says “After changes upon changes we are more or less the same.” But lately I’m thinking, “Pardon me, but I don’t think so”.
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I’ve had eleven months of the good life. Last June 3oth I stopped my billable hour schedule, quit my job, and let my own rhythm put me to bed and wake me through the brightness of the sun or the damp of the rain. I hasten to add that I live this way because my lifelong partner is supporting me: working and keeping track of it all so I can ease my transition to the writing life.

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“Ease” is a too safe and not fully honest verb here: I am feeling my way along an unknown wall. It is pitch black and although I trust the wall to guide me, one step after another, and it does, don’t ask me where I’m exactly headed. Some days I am amusingly shocked that I don’t know. And some days I am significantly shocked that it doesn’t matter.
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This is the context and landscape upon which I have encountered deep love. When I explain that it is the kind of love that makes you cry, just leaves you standing there wiping your eyes with your sleeve because you never saw it coming, most people seem to understand what I mean.
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Have I not loved like this before? How is it that I’ve lived these adult years—raised a family, worked hard, been a good citizen, and not until now truly felt and accepted deep love?
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Don’t get me wrong: I know how to love. And I’m not prone to melodrama. It’s not that I’m in a permanent state of bliss. Actually, mine is not an easy existence. My heart is still equipped with these little toothpicks, ready to protect itself should someone particular try for entry I cannot handle, little toothpicks: now that’s a fortified defense. This might be the problem. I don’t have a fortified defense. These days I don’t have much of a defense at all. I am walking along, strolling the crunchy streets of Northampton, planting my sun garden with wide hope and even wider grins, writing poems and painting words with my buddy soul mate, and I am loving deeply.
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With the chance of a life time to live as I wish, I’ve come to believe that no matter how good it gets, life is not easy. I haven’t escaped death, drought, deception or disarray. Still, most days I walk around stunned by the love around me. Sometimes it is quiet, like a prayer, other times it spikes up my spine and I gasp, sometimes I am overwhelmed by it for no other reason than I now understand what it is.
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I am not the best candidate for the office of deep love. Twice I’ve committed the most unforgivable crimes of betrayal when only love was needed, and I have let my ego dance around every stupid purposeless question asked and expected of me: Am I right? Do I have power? Will I come in first? Am I strong enough? Smart enough? Full enough? Do you love me enough?
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But that was then. Today I have quieted my ego, dropped my defenses, and cast open my full and fragile heart. My old barriers are gone. They melted. Or maybe they’ve shriveled from too little use. Or they’ve recognized the little toothpicks of my heart will give it all up anyway, so what’s the use.
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I love more these days even as I am more vulnerable. I cannot tell you what my life will look like tomorrow or next week or next year. I no longer know how to operate my arsenal of protection. I cry at the drop of a hat or the sound of a gentle word, and I don’t try as hard anymore not to.
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My daughter talks about this baby she will soon deliver and I know in the deepest safest place that enough of her life has been right. My friend whispers “I love you” and know it is true. My partner of 21 years walks out the back door and I swallow hard knowing she will help me find myself even when it looks like some of me will be lost to her. I look in my mother’s eyes and I know I have the deepest special honor of helping her prepare to say goodbye.
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I am transformed. I am transformed by deep love. That’s what it is. Am I happier because of it? No. Am I wealthier, or wiser, or clearer or safer? No.
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But I am present. And surprisingly safe. Perhaps this is where I started, where I’ve been hiding all along, where I will now live and thrive. And perhaps, after changes upon changes, I have become more or less the same.