I’ve been sitting on my
balcony, digesting my breakfast and my thoughts, and letting the lovely ocean
air take me where it will. I found myself thinking about a reaction that I had
a couple of days ago when I received, along with dozens of others, a letter of
love, happiness, and gratitude from our darling Martha. Beside my grown-up
response of gladness for her, another set of feelings stirred: why is she
saying all of these things to so many when clearly, I am her most special
friend! If there is love to go around, I want it to be mine, all mine. Though I
have a sense of humour about little kid reactions of this nature, I also
recognize their power. I remember a time when my grandson Theoren was about
three and his sister Emily, close to one. I was loading them into their car
seats for their return from the cottage to Toronto. I leaned over to kiss Emily,
saying to her: Goodbye, my darlin’, darlin’. Quick as a shot Theoren leaned
forward in his seat and looking directly at me with accusation and anger in his
face, said to me: No! I'M your darlin’, darlin’!! – a phrase I had used in
speaking to him since he was a baby. Yes, I said to him: you are my darlin’,
darlin’ boy and Emily is my darlin’, darlin’ girl. Oh, he said, mollified by
this logic, and sat back into his seat.
How we long to be THE ONE, the
special adored and irreplaceable one, the recipient of all important resources,
not yet understanding that love is unlike more tangible things: it’s not a pie
that can be divided so many times until only the crumbs remain. On the
contrary, the more it is shared, the more it grows and deepens – something like
the story of the loaves and the fishes. But I do understand from personal pain
and experience that desire to grasp and to hold and to find security from a kind
of delusion that we can ever be all in all to another. We have our special
loves and absolutely, Martha and Theoren are two of mine, people who will
always hold a historically (as in our shared stories) and personally (as in the
elements that have attracted us to one another) created pride of place within
me. At the same time as my own life changes as do theirs, and indeed as do those
of all of my friends, I can see and feel how we grow and change and expand
beyond the boundaries that we have lived within in the past.
The heart is indeed a hungry
beast that must be fed, respected, and understood.
Holy shit Brenda you hit that nail on the head as one with a thousand siblings can understand. But understanding does not mean letting go. One just has to forgive oneself for these ungenerous thoughts. My sister Doris is in CR with my brother who lives there. How can she prefer his company over mine? (They golf, I don't). They have tons in common. It's still tough.
ReplyDeletePiggies fight with one another for the tit. They must or they die. Competing with whoever for whatever is completely mammalian behaviour. Love is the most important emotional resource in our entire existence, so the fact that we (mostly inwardly) grate about not getting as much as we hunger for is entirely normal. I think that the kind of thoughts that you speak of are quite natural. How you feel things and how you act on them are quite different things, however. The best way of dealing with this stuff is by having a sense of humour about it, I believe. And don't hesitate to tell the people you love that you want all of them for yourself. They'll love it and they'll know exactly what you mean.
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