
Shut the Hell Up!
The house on the island, where I came and went on weekends, is the same. The curve around the harbour in Tobermory is the same, a colourful thriving capital, sitting on the edge of a sheltered bay at the northern entrance to the Sound of Mull. In the summer, the hill above the town was clothed in green, the sky more often a foggy blue. It’s just the same today.
Only I am different.
Gone is the kid with the winning smile, the young heart talking too quickly and too loudly of the love he owned and wished to give away. Gone is the kid who asked his teacher what work Jesus would do if he came to the island tomorrow…would He fish? I asked, and would He work for my dad? Mrs. Braebrooke told me that Jesus would find it difficult if he returned because of the lack of honesty and faithfulness, and the rarity of finding an accommodating spirit. She said he might be met with abuse or scoffed at for His gentleness.
So, I thought, not much has changed for Jesus, either.
No longer that same kid, I’m not sorry for a love once known, lost, found again. I wonder if Jesus ever thinks about that? What did love ever do for Him? I was always timid about loving after finding the real thing, preferring a world of dark rooms, those in broken down hotels, imagining such places would present me with something as large as new love. But no, just momentary flashes of self-absorbed gratification.
The streets I pace now are unfamiliar.
But there was a time, in the fall of the year, when the sun’s bright yellow mingled with the fog over the harbour, and Tobermory was the whole world. The time when I chased a girl’s nakedness down the beach after a day spent looking in her direction, and maybe the years of love that followed was worth the lifetime of looking.
Yes, I wish I was ten years old again, my dreams all before me, my bed unmade, the boy on the bow of the ferry, ears chipped with cold. I was always impatient, always in a hurry, the seedling of manhood picked too early, just to understand how I was growing. I’ve never freed from the haunting fear of foolish choices, but those choices always seemed so far away, and I imagined I would change by the time I reached them.
It is a weak nature that says: if only I could live my life over. Whenever I hear myself think such a thing, I need a good hard kicking. Life offers so many compensations, having been kissed soft, kissed hard, kissed well, kissed hello, and kissed goodbye, as my life filled with Don Quixote adventures. I’ve taken my chances and lost, won, and been too scared to wonder. I’ve had philosophy banged into me, insanity placed upon me, misfortune bury me, and every time, every single time, a kiss always repaired the damage.
I left the island to find so much disappointment and disillusionment. Boy, it hurt. But on balance, however, the gains turned the scale. It was the kisses that stood me up. Those of my surviving son.
While under the age of forty, I was never meant to love Beethoven’s music, or appreciate the portraits of Velasquez, or understand the nature of a good wine . Nor was I meant to be a hero. But every day between ten and forty I understood and appreciated what it was to be kissed. Between forty and sixty, I listened to Beethoven, owned a book of Velasquez’s portraits, and enjoyed the warmth of excellent wine.
September is the edge of hope, I travel through it carefully.
After I have done all this, lived all my mistakes, hurt those I loved, paid my dues in tears, and danced a jig of a life so beautiful, I can now, finally, come home where land meets sea, and what falls upon me is the pleasure of a deliberate Scottish evening.
I write about love often. If, in life, the feelings I’ve been willing to share have not always been accepted as truth, I can’t complain. I’ve known certain minutes of pleasure, and I assure you I was once younger — perhaps a lot younger — what then, what has life taught me? This: there is no loving without losing.
My banner is bright red, my hope heaped high.
If certain past experiences I write about seem born of pain, they surely were, but the compensation — not always evident at the time, overrides the sorrow and self-pity. I’ll tell you why, and this I can pass along with confidence. Love is better done than talked about.
So, I’ll shut the hell up.
