Stillness

Stillness just before the sun rises on hot, summer mornings. The barely-cool hint of air before the heat returns with ferocity. The way the world seems to wake in chorus, the birds and insects and sun and plants arising all at once.

Waking up next to you. The sense of heat and your body which I know as intimately as my own. Pulling ourselves from the depth of stillness without a whisper. The physicality and proximity and rawness of these bodies.

The perfection of mornings with young people who are still wee enough to shelter from the real monsters who mostly sit in large, air-conditioned offices. Kisses on dirty foreheads and pain that can be kissed away. The desperately brief moment in time that you can wear your bridesmaid dress with a superman cape and tennis shoes without an outward thought.

The memory of lying with you in the dark, sheltered by the dense forest, whispering the most intricate pieces of our souls in the naivete of youth. Thawing my perpetual chill with your heat. Tracing outlines of your body with my fingers until the stillness and calm carry us both into slumber, clinging to one another through the darkest and loneliest hours. Waking fully exhausted and utterly rejuvenated.

The moments we manage to steal that are reminiscent of a time before I became a mother and you became a grandmother. Long movie nights and dinner prep and exercise classes that became our shared routine.  The selfish way in which I would fill both my world and yours with my stories and drama and concerns. The intimacy of your proximity, your body which I knew as well as my own for nine months, the mutability of our time together. The knowing that I don’t understand just how rich these fleetings seconds are; the overwhelming sense that I can’t possibly fathom the alternative because for as long as I have been, you have been. For every moment I have needed courage, the mere thought of you instilled in me exponential bravery.

Home. The opening of the door after a long period away. The smell of familiarity, of love, of dogs and kids and chaos and meals cooked by a man who, in another lifetime, would have been a chef. My place in the world so wholly solidified by the presence of two older brothers; my passion for music and books and laughter and storytelling born in their influence. The sense that even after these long years and all these miles, to be together in one place is to find myself home. No longer a solitary place, but present in a dozen separate souls traipsing across the planet in disparate directions.

Words that seem to come from you in my darkest, most desperate moments. A voice message or a text that instill in me the courage to continue on the path I have chosen, despite doubt and anxiety as I lay restless into the morning hours, trying to chase away the sense that I am in disturbingly unknown territory. The incantation to be brave, to live meaningfully, and to give myself to the world despite fear. The assurance that all of these things that feel chaotic and meaningless and out of control are the definition of living. To walk knowing you are with me is made trivial by the word special. And yet, I find your presence has blessed me with infinite grace. And, my dearest, I fear if the day ever comes that I don’t have you, I shall find myself very much alone.

The feeling of cool, fresh, mountain water on the skin and the weightlessness of floating with blue sky and clouds overhead. Buoyancy. The sense that I am, somehow, just another molecule following the whim of the waves that bounce against the shore. The silence with submersion. Stillness.