It is about the nature of losses great and small, and how it isn't hard to master the art of losing things...except, of course, that is terribly difficult to lose something that is worth having.
It isn't a happy piece of poetry, but it's real and so beautiful, and my memory of hearing it for the first time is a good one. It was a beautiful spring day in Chapel Hill and I was a sophomore sitting at a much-scribbled upon desk in Greenlaw Hall. I still remember my throat closing up and suddenly viewing the room through a watery veil of unshed tears and thinking that life didn't get much better than being able to spend an hour talking about poetry and the universality of loss with a collection of bright minds. I could practically feel the fibers of my mind stretching and encompassing more knowledge and it was a marvelous thing.
(This isn't a sad post, by the way. There is no new and profound loss knocking at the Ewalds' door tonight.)
I find myself feeling wistful because I missed a call from my friend Mary Katherine, and I was suddenly struck to the soul with a longing for her crazy wild curls and emphatic gestures and spilled drinks. And that made me miss long nights draped over couches and sprawled on rugs and drinking in...and with... the APA/B girls...Lauren's contagious laugh and Statesville T shirts, Chloe's wit and beautiful smile, Cameron's enunciation and perceptiveness, Ashley's gentleness and ever-present bowl of vegetables, Kristin's light-up-the-room shiny spirit and constantly-in-motion earrings, and Leslie's whole-hearted,huge-eyed, single minded focus on whoever would be talking.
You see, an enormous part of what made college amazing was found in that collection of girls. I loved my classes and darn near everything else about my university, but the really wonderful part was having a new family of the heart to share the whole process with me.
We live all over the place now, in different states and countries, and we keep in touch the way that old friends do...sporadically, but deeply. And I love that I know the big things...Kristin buying a house (!), Chloe being smitten (!), Mary Katherine moving again (!) the incredible angelic beauty of Ashley's little boy, the antics of Leslie's houseful of gorgeous children, and so on for several different lives of "big things". I love those things. And they know all of my "big" things too.
But I sometimes miss sharing the small and daily with these women.
Like the many faces of my son and how easy it is to coax a beautifully be-dimpled smile from him these days.
And the reckless abandon of our "how can she be this big already" daughter. Sister savors life. And runs pretty much constantly.
What Bishop doesn't tell us in her poem is that the real art of losing is learning to accept loss gracefully. Without loss, there is no room for a season of new growth in our lives. And while I yearn for the girls in the chairs, I also can't imagine raising my children without the community of women here in Rochester. And I know that soon enough I'll have to miss them too...but in the meantime, I just love being with them and raising our kids together. It's a time as profound and precious as those college years...even if the only poetry we discuss is more along the lines of "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and it's strangely mesmerizing power over crying babies.
And each of the women I've mentioned has the happy gift of making friends easily. And I love those women for carrying on the good work of loving my girls. The Jenn Dukes and Karla Gonzalezes of the world make me smile. I could add many more names but it would take a really long time. And it'd be kind of like reading Numbers in the Bible...long lists of names are really mind numbing. So I won't do that.
But I will say that I've dealt with my momentary sadness in the best way possible...by turning instead to a celebration of the kind of love that lives with open hands. And while I may not be able to tumble into my bed after giving out seven big hugs to my friends, I can go and look at my sleeping babies and marvel at their long eyelashes and dimpled fists and sweet cheeks. It's small, it's ordinary, and it's totally and completely precious to me. And I know that my friends would feel the exact same way. Because that's why we're friends...our hearts match in all the important ways.
Someone should write a poem about that...
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