Handsome and gentle
There is a picture of my boy looking out at me from my PC.You can see the man he will one day become, handsome and gentle. He seems intelligent, yet guileless, looking at me frankly, without judgement, the way he does.
He is a skinny boy, a gentle boy, a delicious boy. He is my dreams wrapped in a human skin.
I can forget we are apes; I can believe we are made of something special.
Yet.
I cannot ever look at him without sadness that he will one day perish. I feel it is a crueller fate than my own demise.
I would believe in any god that could spare him, yet no gods exist to spare him. I would believe in any magic that could let him never die, yet there is no magic in this life.
There is only you and I and he, spinning in our own universes, figments of our own imaginations, spinning out our lives, meaningless to any but us.
He is a handsome boy. I love him dearly. I understand, finally, what love is. It is the certainty of loss. The boy will become a man, drifting quietly away from me, until all I have is a picture, a few garbled memories, a man who I can no longer kiss but I will still yearn to. I know, we are all destined for this. There is no bargain to be made, no court to plead in. There is only today.
posted by Dr Zen @ 6:37 pm
3 Comments:
You speak for me as I watch my sons grow, 12 and 15 now...
One thing though, I'm glad I never stopped kissing my father when I grew up. Those tiny moments are still inside me somewhere.
I can feel them now.
Before saying a word, [Ajahn Chah] motioned to a glass at his side. “Do you see this glass?” he asked us. “I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring. Yet for me, this glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”
http://spiritualprogressives.org/newsite/?p=651
That's lovely, and very apt. Thank you.
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