Better Than a Dream

Photo: Astoria on the Columbia River Bar

My early winter task has been to go through my bags of photographs. Each year of my pre-digital life had been stuffed into its own grocery bag. My goal has been to pull thirty images from each year and scan them. So far I’ve waded through 1985 through 1991. Thousands of pictures have flown into a heap for the fire. And some remain. One photo from 1990 struck me. It shows me laughing with my entire family. I was beside “K” my first lover and adult companion. I was struck with how far life has come since then. I am struck with gratitude for what is now, here on this farm, with my family. Here’s what I wrote in my journal as I looked at this photograph:

I’ll never forget her words. It was July of 1990. I was unconsciously bent on rejecting her. It had been only months since I’d backed out of our wedding. Now I was unsatisfied with the infernal hovering. I wanted to fly. I’d arrived at freedom’s door. I’d been a professional therapist for nearly two years. The money flowed into my life from multiple sources. I was only twenty nine years young. Condo on the hill. Red turbo car. Degreed. I was itching to live some other way… as usual.

We were due to go on a family reunion trip to Idaho. Little did I know then, that would be the last family gathering. By Labor Day my mom would bravely leave my childhood home, alone for the first time in twenty five years. And I was about to break into the shiny and jagged shards of a new adult life.

Our years as a couple were full of travel, wine, concerts and all that the burning city and verdant hills could offer. I claimed her as my very first lover. I had just risen from graduate school. Only four years before I had been homeless. Now that I was home I was on the cusp of rejecting her.

The trip was set to begin in a week. I was poised to go alone. Of course I told her everything on my mind; one of my better habits (?). I remember how she looked up at me from our tangled sheets. I remember her exact words:

“You better not dump me now. Wait. This vacation is all we’ve got left. You better take me along.”

We went on that vacation. We laughed. Loved. For ten days we forgot the leaving and denying of our years together. My mom brought our whole family together on Redfish Lake one last time. We were all happy. How transient and yet lasting, this life.

I say this to you, dear reader: Be careful. Some day you will come across a photograph that will remind you of the selves you thought you left behind. Hundreds of colors will hit you. You’ll find that events and people are still alive in you. And they may be almost too much of an effort or pain to examine. I encourage you to look anyway.

It’s not that I miss her. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not that I made a faulty decision to leave. What comes is a great flood of joy. It’s so big it hurts. Also, there is regret. I was so unaware how rich life really was… really IS… at the time.

Photo: Heather on Samhain Night
And then the memories of the others come to me. The woman I lived and grew up with on the river. The one I lost by being too careful. The one who’s anger I embraced too closely. And today one woman I deeply love…my first adult partner… and last. She works on the tugs and barges on the Columbia River. On her travels she passes the island beach where I first loved a woman. She sends her wake upon the shore where my once young cats grow old without me. She plies the waters like the innocent one of islands.

What slaps against my hermit’s heart is how important all the people have been in my life. I also see how the dark lord of depression, the family sicknesses and the drug of the spirits have all sucked me away from connecting with others. Really, I’m grateful. I see how I really, truly lived my full life. Yet in the aftermath of so many efforts and hard work I see a continual leaving behind. All in search of an ideal. My ideal loves have been in the form of psychology, shamanism, holistic healing, Art, an island paradise, a house or two and now this cabin in the field. These are simply not enough for me anymore. In the memories I see the skin, the eyes. I feel the laughter and arguments. I soak in the silences and drunken nights and love making and dreamy plans together. I always ended up leaving for the sake of an Avalon. So many chances of love rejected.

I admit I am more grounded now. Leavings and rejection and splitting up always extract a deep toll. All the wine and song and trips and money spent. All the long discussions and sweet kisses and family gatherings. What were they for?

Wisdom!

The past is not gone. I have taken it all along with me. All my friends and relations. All the experiences. It’s like I’ve died. Now I’m recollecting and reviewing all of God’s gifts. How do I transform the ones I neglected or used or slept through?

Now I’m working hard not to sleep through my rich and varied life. Here I am in my little cabin, pinning my self to a swaying field, sharing a table with a family. I have a lover who adores me and a broad future. I have no idea how to proceed now that I am present, now that my soul has folded into my growing wisdom.

Be warned, friend. Going through old photos can be dangerous to your complacency. Yes, throw away most of the images if you will. But ponder a few. Hold them lightly and with reverence. These memories are you, right now. Remind yourself of what you’ve moved through with each new photo you release.

I’m grateful today. My life is simpler, less arrogant. I still have the privilege of being on earth, unlike a small but growing number of my friends and lovers. I have the pleasure of this cabin and this desk. I have the plans for community taking shape from my sweat in the sawdust. And I have a beloved coming home to me this evening. While I plot nothing but to simply be here with her. She comes back to our home on the edge of a country mountain. The smell of the river in her hair. The love of our shared and tangled life in her eyes. I am grateful at last. I have new simpler wisdom that comes down to this:

Life is better when it’s shared

Sometimes what you have now is good enough. And sometimes it is better than what you could have ever dreamt.

Rick