Yesterday I realized my loss.
I was getting a massage to avoid an injury at soccer practice. [Note: I injured myself, anyway.] It had been an intense day at work. One thing that got lost in the morass was the maintenance man coming to hang pictures in my office. I'm not allowed to do such a thing. I can only do damage. He did his work, and I went on with my day. My colleagues noticed that I was committing to the space, now. I may be staying.
The wall hangings include my framed degrees and "goodbye" presents from my family in Pflugerville.
As I turn to my left from my computer station, I encounter the going away present from my youngest child, who is now 13.
"The storis of how the sun loved the moon so much he died every day to let him breath."
They don't teach spelling, anymore. That's because they don't test it. Doesn't matter in this case. I can feel a deep sense of love emanating from my left when I am working.
In front of me as I work--something my wife found on Pinterest. It reminds me to focus on the positive aspects of things.
While my youngest offers a more open version of love, my wife shows her love differently. I am admonished to live a happier life...because she loves me.
My son framed a set of family photographs from Chad Adams Photography. He does excellent work, and he remembers his clients when he sees them at Austin Aztex games. When he gave me the gift, he told me how to let people know about us:
I did not let him down; I know how to follow directions.
Yesterday, though--without realizing what I was doing--I had the maintenance man place another screw into the wall.
This solitary hardware is the missing piece, the one that hasn't quite finished it, the one that thought this was happening tomorrow...and the one piece that is perhaps the best metaphor of any relationship represented in this office. One lone screw waits for what I may or may not deserve, what I may or may not receive. It stands as a symbol of how difficult love--any love--can be. It wasn't even a conscious decision on my part. It was an instinctual "maintenance" of hope; it's loving because you choose to love. It's making sure that there's a place in my office, my heart, my life for my eldest if ever she chooses to want one. The loss comes from the makeshift deadline: picture-hanging day.
I once special-ordered Kenny Rankin's After the Roses cassette tape (!) because I heard a cabaret piano player in Minneapolis end his set with "What Matters Most." A perfect statement closes the song: what matters most is that we loved at all.
