Kindnessgirl

We sat together after everyone had left…sitting in the aftermath of kindness. It is the kind that isn’t always so easy, it is heavy and sometimes sad.

He cried a little. I know that cry, when you all of the sudden feel the pain of another, you don’t even know quite what to do with it because you know it is bigger than anything you’ve ever known or walked or held. And you can’t quite imagine living with it, and yet people do, with gnashing and fight and grace and beauty and strength and vulnerability and shame and pride and pieces all over, lots of pieces. …and we find our way.

“I don’t think we are supposed to fix it, I don’t think we can. I guess we just have to be in it with the people we love, stand by them, offer our love and feel theirs.” I said.
He nodded, somehow comforted by these words…and I think of all the years it took me to figure that out.

…and I wonder if other people are having these kinds of conversations with their 11 year olds. I wonder if I have brought my kid into this life that I feel lost in myself so many times, a life that constantly requires me to find new parts, heal old parts, choose courage again, even when I would rather not. …and yet I don’t really know any other way to be. He is stuck with me, in all of this broken kind life.

and it isn’t about rescue or being a good person, or passing some big value on…it’s just one human to another, one struggle among many being shared, one call that you are drawn to over and over again like a moth to a flame, one moment of seeing each other, one trust to let it pour or trickle out, and almost every time, there is no preparation, no chance to guard your heart or put the shutters up for the storm…it happens over making macaroni out of a box, or carrying laundry up the stairs, or one look when someone walks through the door.

…and we will sit, listen, talk and sometimes cry when that someone leaves…and then someone else will sit, listen, talk and cry when we leave…and later we will look up to the sky and see the moon shine, in all her glory…in the dark.