Enchanted by the way her pink words made the ends of her coral lips curl, I accepted an invitation to sit with her a while. I had been walking with my thoughts circling my constricted head all morning, so I welcomed a chance to sit with youth on a weathered bench. Facing the ocean I listened to her, dreamily visualizing each letter bubbled, dots turning into rotund hearts floating above the i's like balloons. The beauty of her 23 years is that her fantasy like view of life remains unscarred despite the state of the world we live in. It's as though there was a fortress of "love will conquer all and guide me" built around her "happily ever after" that she is willing to defend for as long as she can, until her first real heartbreak....and the recognition that more decisions than we care to admit do not stem from a place of love......23 years is a long run.Do I share with her how just a few weeks ago while trying to get myself ready to speak to my son's teachers, I stood frozen before a mirror? Where years ago putting make up on my face was as natural as brushing my teeth, or showering, now my image on that piece of glass was completely foreign?....How it was challenging to shadow and line eyes that looked back in disbelief over the intense disconnect that I allowed to happen?
It had not occurred overnight, this removal....it cames in waves....10 years ago I was faced with having to buy a few items of clothing and I was completely overwhelmed. No longer was I familar with my body (years of pregnancies, childbirths and refusal to look below my neck) but I also had no idea how to dress it, what I liked, what I thought would flatter me. I suppose it's easy to put these episodes past me when there were so many real pressing issues in my life. But now, its not my silhouette that had me panicked, it was the reality that I was scattered in so many places and so many people that I saw myself more in thier likeness than in my own. Years of not wearing make up, of pulling my hair back into a haphazard ponytail, throwing on whatever fit, willingly putting aside anything I would have liked to do to help family, friends, anyone (because I wanted to help too), years of researching new ways to try to make a difference to Gabe's life, years of trying to compensate time to my other 2 sons because the guilt of not giving them as much would kill me.....wanting to be able to fix it all, be everything my family needs me to be, just loving them was never enough....just wishing was never enough....just doing was never enough....I was never enough......
The outside is a direct reflection of the inside.......No matter how dressed up or down you are, how much you try to hide, or how those in your world see you, you know what is going on inside you resonates, it's just a matter of how much you are willing to recognize and reconcile....
So, my instinct was to paint my face. A self portrait. To sit with a mirror and really think about what I saw, how I saw it, what I felt, and put it on canvas, in color. My words, sometimes so colorful they get me in big trouble, have long lost thier pink edge..... I've discovered my lips haven't....
Do I tell her it's as easy to lose yourself in details as it is to lose yourself in the big picture of it all? That the vows she has committed to memory and romanticized are no where near specific and so it can lead to an overload of delusions of grandeur and massive misunderstandings? Do I tell her love evolves? Love deepens... Sometimes it's not enough, and sometimes it does give us the strength to go on....Do I tell her that love requires alot of work? Would she be able to understand just how much? And do I tell her that 20 years later, if she doesn't awaken from the fantasy and learn to tend to her needs as well, she might find herself having to go back and pick up the abandoned ambitions she once defined herself by, revamp them and assign a new color to her words.
We sit quietly now, watching the seagulls dive into the ocean, the shores lined with seaweed and shells......The deep cerulean blue above it all, the gradation of blue and greens mixed inbetween foaming waters...the soft light biege of sand....and the salted breeze that lingers in your hair and on your clothes long after the dunes have been left behind......
"I love the beach" she exclaims sprinkling pink sparkles everywhere...I watch the bubble "I" bubble "l" bubble "o".........She glitters, it must be the sun........I prefer my bubbles in champagne....my regrets and fears have been covered in chocolate, so if I have to wash it down, it should be light, bubbly and crisp...on the dry side...and if it's French, all the better....I take a breath in and puff out a " stay true to who you innately are, but be open to who you are meant to be, try not to get sidetracked in between, if you are going to try to please most people make sure you are one of those people"....and the words hung over our heads like smokey grey tiaras...dispersing slowly into the spaces between us...........
