One day, I will remind my nephew Joshua of how he had found a grasshopper, kept it in a jar with a few sprigs and water and named it Frank. I will remind him of how excited he was as he asked everyone in the house if they had met his new friend Frank. The grasshopper was not looking good by the end of the day and he saw it. Before bedtime, Joshua told my mom he was worried about Frank . My mom said it was because Frank needed to be outside to survive, and that it would die if he kept it longer in a jar. Joshua felt bad. He said he did not want Frank to die. Mom told him he could open the window and set the grasshopper free. I was in the same room in my computer but I got up, took the jar to the window and called my nephew to open the lid. Joshua walked up to me and did exactly what I said. Frank flew out of the jar. I told Joshua "You can say bye to Frank." And he repeated quietly "Bye Frank." He ran to my mom and cried. Needless to say, my mom cried with him.
I ended 2018 with a reflection on loving and it goes: When I say I love you, it means I am ready to lose you. When I say I love you, it means that I have become both a child and an adult -- a child who loves with abandon yet with an adult's capacity to hold the ground, sit with pain and be okay with it.
I ended 2016 in California recording this song right before New Year's Eve and it was my first time to sing again after giving birth and migrating to the US. Sinta was still a baby and there was not much quiet room to sing in so I sneaked out of the house and recorded it in the car with my laptop: https://open.spotify.com/track/65ZEUIHNWYdvNxFfDoHkHU?si=z_N159bsQi-XRi6NpSSExw
I reminded myself of why I am here. I want to love better. I had been withholding myself for fear of rejection and not getting it back. But the more I held on to it, the more I felt untrue and unfree. I finally came out and it was both so difficult and so easy to say: I love you. Everything that came after aligned to what I had just said. I sat with pain. I surrendered to grace filled days of having colleagues and friends take care of me at work. Leoni came to my rescue on Saturday, went to the parade with me even if she was not called for the event and held my hand in the van. Faith took me out to dinner one night and hosted Italian night with the gang. She invited me to these events knowing that I could and would most likely pineapple ( a code we came up with when we want to disappear in social events. Justin calls it Houdini.) Jones did a quick energy healing body scan during intermission. I felt so much love yet so much pain. Blue and white. He said those were the colours that I was least resistant to. It is only painful when you resist after all.
Osmanthus tea at Amanfayun
Letting go is such a cliche. And cliches are cliches because they are true. But what I learned recently is that I could let go while still hold on. Letting go while holding space and allowing everything to have a place. There is no wrong feeling. I could let go while not denying myself of what I feel and what others feel.
(I have a heart condition called Aortic Valve Stenosis that causes me to have a higher heart rate. While science believes that my aortic valve is narrowing, Jones says my heart is expanding and the body is having a harder time keeping up like the Grinch. He said that the Grinch felt his heart ache because it grew twice as big.)
I don't know about the grinch but the pain I feel is definitely a learning curve. I am expanding. I am no longer the jar with sprigs and water for Frank. I am becoming the dark night he flies into. I am the vast expanse of possibility and the fleeting soft breeze at the peak of a humid summer. I am the river that flows through every cranny it finds and passes naturally without permission. I am the sprawling vine innocent of its own design.
And because I realize that love never goes away, I find it everywhere in the changing faces of the season moving to its natural rhythm. Perhaps I did not recognize it at first but I see it now. I see you, love. And you are looking back at me.