degrees of lovability

meeting new old friends by the river, always looking for snakes, thoughts on a father who never was.

When you encounter a person who has a soul, you sense that he or she has really lived and is complicated and deep. Individuality and character, the feeling of being made of real stuff and a degree of lovability all signal the presence of soul. I often tell my psychiatrist students, “If you meet a personal of stellar intellect and achievement, you may admire him, but you may not have dinner with him.” Wanting to share a meal is a sign of the soul.

Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore

I met a man by the river in Sedona. And I wouldn’t have met him if it weren’t for a series of mistakes I made, which led me to the Lo Lo Mai springs campground. When we arrived I immediately told the girls we were going down to the River. The river was like something from a mother’s dream; not too big and rushing, flat gorgeous red rocks, little waterfalls, shady trees…basically nothing that could kill my children outright unless I was really not paying attention. Even so, I found myself in true familiar fashion worried about Esme as she headed straight into the deepest part of the river. This kid. This kid is always heading straight into nature as if, well as if she was nature and so of course it would never hurt her. If she happened upon a group of mountain lions resting on a rock she would, with wholehearted belief, walk towards them to speak to them with loving sounds and feel it was her duty to seize this moment and become their deepest truest friend. It’s maddening.

But I digress. I began to cringe as I heard my voice talking to her about all the things to watch out for. I heard the fear that I was throwing onto her, like a heavy blanket, shutting out all the beauty, I could see it on her face. The definition of crestfallen. This place, didn’t deserve it and yet, there it was…my fear.

I mentioned it briefly in my poem Too Magical , but I’ve always had this nagging fear that Esme won’t be with me long. Could be that her childhood now feels like it is just rushing so quickly, like that river, and she’s always been a bit ahead of her time (not really a kid), the old soul, and I feel her soul racing to an ending point. But truly it was a deeper grief that fell over me when I held her for the first time. I held her and wept (as in ugly crying where you need an entire box of kleenex) at the profound preciousness that belongs to us all in the beginning and for everything that I would most definitely not be able to protect her from. I felt, honestly, like she would die young.

And so when we are in wild places I get a bit wide eyed; preoccupied with the things that could take her from me. And she is also wide eyed with a heart full of love and magic for the world. And so with a tight chest, and my jaw clenching I watched her in the water with my other eye on my three year old (who I, strangely, don’t have this nagging fear around) Shaking my head a bit at my own approach to these moments and how powerless I felt. Aware that I was injecting misery into the magic for the sake of safety. And was it worth it?

And then this man starts coming down the way to the river with a beautiful lady behind him. He was carrying a large walking stick and all I can say was that it was a bit like what Thomas Moore described above there was a degree of lovability that was walking towards me. If John is reading this don’t blush but later I reflected there was a bit of an apostle about him, something calm and light and warm.He walked into the water and we made pleasant talk and I saw him watching Esme swim and he went over and started talking to her very gently and with a definite twinkle in his eye…I saw it. There was a warmth in the way he was observing and talking to her and I envied it. She seemed lifted by the conversation instead of pushed down, like when I speak to her about rivers and rattle snakes and mountain cliff sides. He came over and asked me how old she was and said with appreciation how bright she was and something about her being ahead of her time which of course delighted me. When someone sees what I see. And I found myself briefly confessing what I had just been contemplating that she is always roaming further out to the edge of danger than my mother heart is comfortable. And he said this to me very gently “well, of course…she has to go find it out for herself.”

Well, shit John. It was so simple right?

It wasn’t that she wasn’t hearing my words and warnings. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. She just would have to go out and find it for herself. We all do. I did. You do. No matter what anyone tells you. There is never a knowing of anything until we go out and find it for ourselves. And of course this only comes through the experience of it. John’s words instantly reminded me what I’ve known for a long time, and why I had wept almost nine years ago, that wouldn’t be able to protect her from the dangers of finding. That wasn’t actually my job.

So I stood there, watching John peripherally, trying not to stare but I kept fighting the urge to go up and ask him if he wanted to come to dinner and how he had done it? I’d known him for five minutes but I wanted to make him food and talk to him for hours, that was the kind of person he was…standing there in the water, eyes all warm and bright like a ridiculous Christmas morning or something. He had shared a little bit about himself and I knew he was a parent. And I had so many questions. I kept whispering to myself, How?, How do I let her?

I carried that through the whole next day as we were was hiking. I kept noticing moments where I was telling her this or that and not letting her find out for herself and really feeling in my stomach how criminal that was. Still I felt like the line between where I would know to step back or lean in didn’t exist. I don’t know where the line is. My instinct was to always lean in. She gets to play but I get to sit scanning the hillside for child eating mountain lions, assessing rocks for rattle snakes, or eyeing deep parts of the river for signs that it might sweep her away. Basically I’m going to need a lot of practice to let her do anything.

And so I carried Johns words in my pocket. And our paths crossed again the next day and the more we talked the more it felt like meeting a very very old friend. Come to find out this is what he does in the world. He talks to people. He holds healing space for them; at rivers and sacred places. We sat chatting, both our eyes starting to twinkle now, at all the synchronicities between us. A lot of “no ways!” were uttered. And I kept marveling that I wasn’t even supposed to be there at that river, at that campsite…but there I was talking to this person who’s degree of lovability and soul as Thomas Moore would say was off the charts.

It was on our drive out of Sedona heading towards Santa Fe that I talked to my sister and she shared some news about my biological father. I share it here now because John’s words came back to me. The words that were meant for Esme but the words that rose up and opened a door for me to answer a question my sister had.

Our biological father had just gotten word that he has six months to live. I asked my sister how she was feeling and she said she was surprised that what came up for her first was a kind of pathetic thought….there won’t be anyone at the funeral who has anything nice to say about him…that there would be no redemption story for him…he never came around. I uttered peacefully from my heart that, he had never learned how to love.

We both thought for a moment on what we might say, standing in a room of other people (that he had perhaps also hurt) about what had he given us? I haven’t really spoken to my father since I was seventeen. We met briefly one day in my twenties in a hallway, as I helped my sister move out of her place, and he showed up with a truck. And even though it had been over a decade he just said, Hey, how’s it going and kept on up the stairs. The loss happened a long long time ago.

So I sat with my sister on the phone and I felt deeply that what I would say about my father is that in the absence of his love, or kindness, or acceptance, or any sort of sense of safety…in that absence I knew truly from an early age there was something to go find. I knew something was missing. And as John said so perfectly, Well, of course…I would have to go find it for myself.

And that is alright. That is the work. The permission we give to ourselves, to our children, to each other to seek out what is true, what is loving and what is maybe a little dangerous but always beautiful, as Esme would say, if you’re really looking.