My love was born at my mother’s breast and in
my father’s strong arms. It was a sucking, insatiable, infantile love. I was
happily curled in the warm embrace of pure need.
My love was shaped in early days by my need
to perform. I worked hard at home, in sports, and at school. I had a first-born
child's natural sense that people would love me if I excelled.
My love turned inward and became hidden and
personal with a series of best friends. Michael and Mickey and Lance and
Steve and Mark and Kenny. We claimed the rights to our own lives and our own
loves. We stood
together against the world with our secret clubs and inside jokes.
My love thrashed against my arm like a tethered
falcon when I discovered the beauty of ponytails and freckled smiles. A series
of little girls first turned my head and then turned my guts into jelly. The falcon
burst its tether and screeched, circling and diving, causing me to throw myself
to the ground in a panic. Bonnie and Carmen and Kathy and Tracy and Diane and Laura and Julie and Elma.
How I ached and longed and cried and failed and watched from afar. Waves of
feeling rose up in my chest and cast me face-down upon my bed. There was no end
to it and no relief because it felt so good and it hurt so bad.
In time I learned the proper words to coax the
falcon back to my arm. I slipped the tether around its foot and paraded it about
for a few years with an imagined sophistication. Oh yes, I had it all figured
out for a time.
And then I went to college and met a woman with a swinging ponytail
and brown eyes that were tender and crinkly when she smiled. She sat across from
me at the Baylor cafeteria, and when she talked she revealed a certain,
indescribable spark of personality that proved irresistible to me. My falcon took
one look at her, snapped its tether, and disappeared over the horizon, never to
return.
I became foolish again, like a small boy. She
carried a basket instead of a backpack. Suddenly I loved baskets, the weave and
feel and smell of them. She had pale skin, so pale skin became the loveliest skin
in the world as far as I was concerned. Once I was able to pick her out of a crowd of young women in
shorts because I recognized her knees. She had a smile that could light up my
heart and brown eyes that were too beautiful and powerful for me
to understand. I wanted to keep her. I wanted her to be mine.
I wanted to hold her and defend her with my life against anything in the world
that would harm her.
I had her for a few months, and then I lost her. I
was inconsolable and fell into a time of loneliness. I could not feel love for any other woman. I worked. I paid my bills. I
prepared to go to seminary.
Then an unexpected letter arrived, causing my
heart to thrash about in my chest. There was a near-collision in a supermarket
aisle, and then we were sitting on the floor of her apartment, both frightened. She of hurting me and I of being hurt. But our
hands moved across the carpet like small creatures with wills of their own. Our
fingers entwined, and all the powers of joy and fear and pain and love came
together in that moment.
My love became our love. I felt like I had
arrived, but the story of my love was only getting started. I now understand that we knew almost nothing of
love at that time. For our love had not yet faced the 12 labors of Hercules.
We had to survive financial crisis and the slow
loss of the passion of youth. We had to survive the exhaustion of work
and responsibilities. And then there came three children, three sucking vortices
of need. We had to cling to each other, blue eyes locked on brown, swearing
before the heavens that we weren’t going to let these three angelic demons take
everything from us. For it is the nature of children to take everything and the duty of parents not to let them.
Years passed, and we aged together. We learned to love our softening bodies with their new demands and needs. Sometimes, when we were very tired, we would
say that it was the two of us against the whole world. Friends would change, the
children would leave, but our secret club was forever.
Then a tragedy happened. I woke up in a bathtub filled
with ice. There were stitches on the left side of my chest and a note that said,
“Sorry, but we needed your heart.” I arose, dripping cold water on the floor. I
had the face and the look of Gordon, but there was something absent from my eyes.
My trademark silliness was gone. And I could not feel any of the happy things. I
couldn't feel love or joy. I was numb inside and sometimes angry for no reason.
I carried on by the powers of
obligation, duty, and shame. I put one foot in front of the other. I smiled at
home and at church. I said the right things to the children. I tried to force myself to
be myself, but that never really works. Jeanene learned to live with the zombie
version of Gordon, which is its own kind of tragedy.
The doctor called it depression, and he gave me
pills. They worked pretty well for a long time. I was happy and my boyish
silliness returned. Jeanene and I began reconnecting. Our hands had to crawl
across a carpet of fear to find each other, but they did and things were good.
This is so hard to write, but I fear something
is wrong again. I’ve slowly lost the ability to feel happiness or love. Once
again I have all of the words and none of the feeling. My need to be alone is
becoming overpowering. I come home and want to go to bed or sit in a corner. The
idea of interacting with people is painful even to think about. Jeanene and the
three sisters obviously know something is wrong.
Damn it! I don’t want to do this again. I’m
going to have to go back to the doctor and start the process over again. I hate
the idea of medication. I hate thinking of myself being dependant on medication.
“Did you remember to pick up your medication?”
“Has anyone seen my medication?”
“Did I take my medicine yet today?”
Medication medication medication medication.
Fucking medication. MY medication. Like it’s some treasured personal possession.
Like it’s now an essential part of me, like a leg or something.
But I'm going to the doctor. Yes sir. I'm not
hesitating this time. I already have the appointment. And I'm going to do
whatever he tells me to do. If he gives me pills (and he will) I’ll smile and
say, "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"
Because this is the story of my love. Do you
understand what I'm saying? This is my love. My love for God and for ideas and
for truth and for our church and for writing and for my friends and for the
three sisters.
And for Jeanene. It's her love too. I have to
remember that. I owe her my best effort to be the man she married.
If I am allowed to live a full live, then half
of the story of my love is yet to be told. And I definitely want to be present
and alert for part two.
rlp
