There is rain today; no need for wishing

“Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing? Isn’t it love we’re sent here for?” Bonnie Raitt, You

I wake to Nanci Griffith’s, “I Wish it Would Rain” playing like a jukebox between my ears. Eight lines in particular run through my mind as I brush my teeth and put on my workout clothes.

Once I had a love from the
Georgia pines


Who only cared for me


I wanna find that love of twenty-two


Here at thirty-three


I’ve got a heart on my right


One on my left… neither suits my needs


No, the one I love lives a-way out West


And he never will need me

On the way down the stairs, I pause at the rectangular window that looks out to the Cascades. There is rain today; no need for wishing. I sing Nanci’s eight lines under my breath. I think, then, of my love from twenty-two. I remember how he pushed his glasses up his nose with the tips of his graceful fingers when he told me a story and how I wanted to listen to him forever. One time he kissed me in the rain on a Seattle street, the sounds of a saxophone floating out of a Blue’s club, and I thought, oh, so this is what all the fuss is about. Another time he told me I was like, ‘the salt of the earth’. When I confessed to not knowing what that meant, he explained it to me.

Our love was not meant to be. I had to let go and it hurt. But I kept the memories. Years later, I put some of them in a book. It won’t be the last time. Because love is never wasted.

The rain is steady on the windshield of the “White Whale” as I drive to the gym. Bonnie Raitt’s “You”, comes on the radio. It’s a song I played over and over in my car when I was a young woman when we listened to songs on CD’s instead of gadgets small enough to fit in a slit of a pocket. I drove a little red sporty car then with two doors and two seats instead of sliding doors and seven seats.

“Isn’t it love that keeps us breathing? Isn’t it love we’re sent here for?” sings Bonnie. Yes, I think. That’s it. That’s all there is.

After the gym, I put away the dishes, and feed the kittens and prepare my cup of berry tea, smiling when I think of the phone call I will make later to my mother because I have something funny to tell her. I laugh out loud at a text from my friend, Natalie, far away in Florida. And I’m grateful for both the love of my mother and this dear, old friend. I loved them both at twenty-two, thirty-three and forty-five. I’ll love them all the days of my life.

I sip my tea and pick up a book of poems by Mary Oliver, hoping for inspiration before I began my work. I open quite by accident to her poem about the owl and it’s penetrating gaze – how it reminds her of how precious her life is – how very much she wants to stay alive.

“as though if wanted he could lift me

and carry me away –

one orange knife for each shoulder, and I,

aloft in the air, under his great wings, shouting

praise, praise, praise as I cried

for my life.

At my desk, I read emails from ‘fans’. Two tell me about the heartbreaking deaths of their children, of how the winter months bring a feeling of despair, but that my books uplift them. Another thanks me for the hours of pleasure I’ve given her.

And there in the middle of it all – the tea in my cup, the cats on the desk, the rain outside my window, I think about loss.

Just last week my friend Kathy lost her mother. As I write this, Teri sits with her ailing father.

My mother lost the use of her legs when she was fifty. My brother and his wife lost their infant son. There’s the loss of my marriage, of course, which the poets say is like a death. I had to let go and it hurt. But no love is wasted. I just look at my two girls to know this.

And Lisa’s twin brother and Katherine’s father, both snatched from us too soon by cancer, and Maria’s father, murdered and Ann’s brother succumbing to drugs. There’s 9-11 and Sandy Hook and the lost troops.

I can count and count all the losses, not one of us unscathed.

I’m a person of faith, but I do not understand why. I know only that love is never wasted.

My phone buzzes, interrupting my thoughts. It’s my ex-husband asking how to make Emerson a ‘perfect soft-boiled’ egg. I write back, “When the water boils, take it off after 30 seconds. She likes to dip her toast in the yolk.”

Later, my phone buzzes again. It’s a photograph of Emerson eating her ‘perfect soft-boiled’ egg. She’s like sunshine, this girl, and my heart does that mommy thing where it almost hurts with how much I love her.

I think of Clare and her baby boy coming any day now and how it will awaken her mommy heart.

Utterly beautiful, sometimes, this life.

I think of those letters from my grieving readers. How could they continue on after the loss of their children? I cannot imagine how, truly. But they did. Just as my friends have moved forward after their losses. Just as my mother did and my brother and me. And these readers, they said my work mattered to them, like the words of the poets I wake to in the morning hours matter to me. Perhaps I’m not invisible after all. Perhaps I’ve done something good with my “one precious life” as instructed by Mary Oliver, even though it’s never been my intention.

Because the truth is, I do this work for myself. I’m selfish. I’m a sinner. I write to understand myself, to purge my own grief, to take note of the inexplicable joys, to examine the complexities of the human experience, to understand why there’s so much loss. I do this work because I love it, because it’s my particular way of shaping and molding the chaotic world so that I can breathe. I write to silence the demons that want to pull me under and cover me with their layer of dusty despair.

But somehow, choosing to do what I love brings more love. I love what I do. It brings love to me. I send it out. It comes back.

In Tea and Primroses, my character, Constance writes, “I didn’t know then that love is a circle.”

Perhaps the poets, Bonnie and Nanci and Mary write for others. Perhaps they are not selfish sinners like me. But it doesn’t matter much because their words mean something to me regardless of their intention. Their poetry has lifted me from despair in the darkest moments of my life. Their words have explained my life to me.

Life is a constant seesaw of loss and gain, triumphs and defeats, beauty and ugliness. It’s a constant juxtaposition of grasping love and letting it go.

It’s love that keeps us breathing. It’s love we’re sent here for. That’s all there is and all there ever will be.