Tirza ~ May 22

 

My mind is preoccupied with how to fire the boy who’s supposed to mow my lawn. Yes it’s rained a lot, but now my lawn is a grassy savannah, waiting for the buffalo to roam. To make it anywhere outside, I worry about ticks, never mind the garden snakes, wading through knee high grass. 

This is what I’m thinking about, and what will his parents think?  Both lovely, and the dad is high up in the village highways department and the vice-captain of the volunteer fire department.  Not people I want to cross. Good people, and I want them to consider me good people too.

 

And B. is not letting me get out of bed. He’s cuddling and kissing my shoulder.  I’m liking it but my mind is still on its hamster’s wheel. 

He’s telling me how glad he is to be feeling. For so much of his life, he’s avoided feeling.  And without feeling, life has no meaning! The words come out of him with force.

He’s finally catching my attention.  And then he says, it’s funny how what we feel in our heart, has such an effect on the brain, the creator of meaning.

I turn toward him in wonder.  I wish I could have written this down, I said.  Listen with your heart, he tells me, not your mind.

And what about touch, he goes on.  Yes, it’s flesh against flesh. But that doesn’t explain it.  It’s way beyond that, it's without explanation.  He’s holding me wholly.

This man knows what makes me tick. Those questions are for me the bonbons other women might crave.  So, we spend a very nice time this morning, with the window wide open to the new summer, in the world of touch, that sends signals straight to the heart.  There are no words in this place.  When sometimes my dearest can’t help but try to describe it, it sounds like a cross between sportscaster and heart throb speak. I dubbed that voice the Narrator, and invariably this Narrator cracks me up, shattering the tender moment.  Oh, the destructive power of even the most affectionate editor.

But this morning, the Narrator doesn't interfere, probably lost somewhere in the jungle grass outside.