Rejoicing in the Passage of Time
Community is the coming together of individuals “who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together and to delight in each other and make others’ conditions our own.” If I have used this quote before somewhere here, I apologize. It is M. Scott Peck, via “All About Love” by bell hooks. It is everything.
We are often encouraged to lament the passage of time (see my post with the bummer Sylvia Plath poem). And of course, I lament all the ways in which my children are growing up, spend time weeping over them while they sleep (wait, is that weird?), miss aspects of lives I’ve led, fear change. But the passage of time also brings growth, distance from grief, new beginnings and stronger bonds. This past weekend was about that.
1. I had the honor of being a bridesmaid in the wedding of my best friend from seventh grade. I hadn’t seen her little brothers since they were toddlers and we were in high school–miserable and feeling like our teenage problems were the whole of the world. Life has not been entirely easy on any of us. Seeing these guys as grown men, handsome in their suits and dancing with one another and their nieces and nephews, I felt such immense gratitude to have been invited into their community and for this visible evidence of all the ways we survive life day after day, year after year.
2. My older son finished middle school, and I gave him and his three best friends pocket watches as a graduation gift–high school is rough, and I want them to each have an object that reminds them of the love and community they built before entering that maze. (The girls at the graduation party they went to dug them. Bonus.)
3. I had a dinner party last night. It was Father’s Day and all of us were either away from our fathers, struggling with relationships with our fathers, or were fathers who were separated from children for one reason or another. There was a headstand/harmonica playing competition (won by yours truly), there was laughter so strong people had to get up from the table and double over. Our community takes some serious hits, and particularly in past couple of weeks there have been events that many of us worried would change everything. Maybe they did, but maybe change isn’t always bad.
Each of these people, whose separate life paths somehow led them to our table, will bear witness to the growth of my sons into men. I am grateful for constants and for the incremental changes that will give way one day to all of us celebrating our survival.
And so let’s rejoice in the passage of time, because every day we see is another day we’ve survived and grown.
What changes are you grateful for? What constants will you fight to protect? How are you different? How are you the same as you always were?
Send me your poems, your essays, your lists. Thank you for reading my words, and for writing your own.
