One-to-One and One-On-One
Reflections, defections, on the way to life’s affections
When the autumn of life came over the horizon, I’d lost things other than my hair, one being the will to fight. I was never fearless back then, but I could not turn away from a fight. That, at least, stems from childhood experiences. I never got used to taking a beating, but neither did I turn and run. In the end, other kids followed me, not because I was a bully but because I would not let them be bullied.
Sure, it’s easy to reflect on life and think about all the chances not taken, the places not visited, the midnights that passed unnoticed. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take those chances again to land here, just exactly here, no changes, just as it is and as I am.
However, no matter how difficult the road was, the journey was enough to heal the recluse in me; indeed, I was so elusive that sometimes I missed the things for which it would have been worth stopping.
I don’t sit and wonder if what I want is attainable; that, in reality, it isn’t out there anyway. There were times I felt strange, caught almost as if the need to be off and running would never be diminished, but the truth is that since love returned to my life, I found I had no reserve of ideas on where I might run next.
Stay, then, she said. I’m lost without you. Such words exposed me to the warmth of love again. Now, to those few who know me, you know I believe in bodies and arms entangling and untangling. I believe, and I know it to be so, that there are so many curves, mounds, and hollows in a woman’s body that no traveller can come to know them all within a single lifetime.
The need for adventure cannot be killed or stopped by one opening that didn’t open, by one trick that wasn’t magic, by one wound of love so fresh it hasn’t yet healed, or by the turning over of years that happened as quietly as a woman turning over in bed.
I believe in one-to-one and one-on-one.
No wine or magic will ever improve on that. I believe in autumn, but only if I’m lying on a pillow and holding a well-loved face in my hands.
Without love, winter is grief with undressed emotions.
None of this life was a cakewalk. Nothing about my life through my fifties was easy. There was no need for a therapist to tell me that I had shut myself away. I did so because I felt a need, not because I couldn’t cope.
There is guilt, of course. I cannot talk about her just to say how much I loved her through all those summers. I go where she is and stand beside the ocean’s movement in the wind and the rain, touched by the cold but feeling her warmth.
When love reappeared, I was with the remnants of wreckage cleaned from the ocean, and where, to this day, there is no sign of the love taken, its depth holds my torment still. For years, I walked alone, momentarily lost and bereft of direction. Along the shore, I picked up bottles and looked for notes. Instead, I found netting and the usual straggle of slimy kelp. I didn’t do that, hoping to find her; I wanted to ensure no one else did. She was beautiful, you see.
In autumn, the wise among us find shelter, not on the shoreline beside crumbling sandcastles but beneath bare limbed trees waiting to be clothed.
How could I have imagined that my planets would again come together? Days that came down empty are once again rigged with stars, dream-filled and no longer barren of comets.
Summer returns with all its Parisian hats and long walks. From the park, the strains of music echo under the maestro’s baton. I could not have imagined summer would return as fluffy or as bright as I remember, pushing away the distant cover of winter, leaving me less fearful of contact once more because instead of the immediacy of lovemaking, love read to me long enough to provide a feeling of stability, comfort, peace, and well-being.
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