Crazy Love

I have been wrestling with this memoir for years. Why write a memoir? Why write anything at all? Who cares?

But I have been encouraged by the people in my life—fellow writers—that this is a worthwhile project. I have 45 years’ worth of journals – I haven’t counted, but the journals take up quite a bit of real estate in my home.

I never look at them—never re-read them. They served a purpose—a vehicle to get the words out that were clogging up my metaphorical arteries.

So, I resist—there is always something better to do than dig up graves. 

But the thing about graves is that we think things are buried and done with. Ghosts. Don’t forget the ghosts. Of course, ghosts are real--memories, photographs, music that bring us back to particular moments or seasons—these are ghosts.

Some are Casper the Friendly Ghosts, some are Marley.

Some ghosts are turning-point moments, fork-in-the-road moments, there-but-for-the-grace-of-God moments, and thoroughly engraved moments. 

They all need a seat at the table. They all need a hearing or a better funeral. 

All these mixed metaphors, ghosts and burials and a seat at the table. What table? For me, it’s the writing table.  Where I go each morning to scribble in a journal.  Bits of dreams, bits of what to do today, bits of memory.  Sometimes long strings of words flow out of the end of my pen. Some mornings, only a short paragraph shows up.

Another metaphor: Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, Fairy Godmothers, Prince Philip, and, of course, Aurora. 

My youngest son, as a little boy, was enthralled by Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. He cast himself as Prince Philip, determined to save the lovely princess. He had a Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue (both plastic; he was only 4 years old). He donned a cape I had made for his older brothers and jumped off the landing of the stairs to battle mightily with Maleficent. Cutting through the wild forest she had caused to grow around the castle, he fought valiantly to rescue the princess with love’s true kiss.

Over the decades, it has become de riguer to reject Handsome Princes rescuing Lovely Princesses-- the princess rescuing herself is the current motif.

But I quibble—(I do that a lot, be warned).

Isn’t it love that rescues all of us?  Isn’t it the kind word, the warm embrace, the shining love in another’s eyes, the listening, the dancing and singing and crazy joy of love that saves us all?

Yes, yes, yes. Oh yes.

‘Tis.

So, that is what I write about. Crazy love.