These few lines I’ll devote
To a marvelous girl covered up with my coat
Pull it up to your chin
I’ll hold you until the day will begin
Still
Lying in the shadows this new flame will cast
Upon everything we carry from the past
You were made of every love and each regret
Up until the day we met
There are no words that I’m afraid to hear
Unless they are “Goodbye, my dear”
Still
I was moving very fast
But in one place
Now you speak my name and set my pulse to race
Sometimes words may tumble out but can’t eclipse
The feeling when you press your fingers to my lips
I want to kiss you in a rush
And whisper things to make you blush
And you say, “Darling, hush
Hush
Still, still”
-Elvis Costello
There’s a feeling, when you’re cleaning and you run across that black-markered mixed cd full of two year old angst and butterflies that were released the first time you listened.
I found said cd tonight, markered up around the middle hole with,
“CD for Katie You are sweet, you are you, you are cute, you are great you are wonderful.”
I hear, “Still,” by Elvis Costello- and I think- instead of regret, or abandonment- I think of one girl who found someone entirely special during one of her most vulnerable moments. I hear that first piano note- and I instantly think of Northfield- or picking apples. I think of all the things that I had put in a box and defined, ‘love as.’ Just like what I had defined love as before him- Winona, Counting Crows, and Chinese food. I think of my daughter- bundled up in her bed right now and me- just waiting to hear the words, “Hi Mommy!” tomorrow morning.
I don’t really define love anymore. It seems like the things I wanted so very much for love- have all disappeared or been wrecked. Wedding dresses hang in their bags in my closet, and a veil is still thrown in a box, from the night I wore it- knowing I wouldn’t really wear it on my wedding day.
And the beauty of this, is this post isn’t a rambling-incoherent rant about men, or not being able to let go- it’s happiness. Because I can listen to that song now- and I can close my eyes, and smile. He’s found someone else- (someone who I think makes him crazy-happy,) and just like when I see all my friends get married away with their happiness spread around their face in a way that when you look? You know- and you smile because maybe- just maybe, being in the presence of something so dramatically wonderful will rub off- and you will claim your smile next.
It’s been an interesting beginning to the year-(have I mentioned that?) The pure release of surgery, and feeling- new and healthy, and seeing my daughter grow and change so much, so soon- and listening- (really listening,) the kind of listening that makes you take days away from the world- you become a robot to work and home and … listening- that you think, that maybe this time- you’ve found a better path.
I went out twice last weekend, and met so many wonderful and interesting people. People used to tell me I glowed in high school- that I was someone special. (Of course- I was naive, and ego-tistical- so I assumed it was true.) I saw that smile a bit ago- with the pictures c took of my daughter and I, then I saw it in the pictures last weekend. So I’ll admit it- it was an almost year long funk. No meds- nothing- just absolutely stepping down to the bareness and the hatred of everything that had become- and realizing that there was that magic moment of looking down at my self-imposed ruby slippers, and taking them off- because tapping together something red and shiny could do no difference. I held the shoes in my hand and walked home.
I’m home. And not in a sense that home is in a man, or in a resident state- home is the feeling I have when I can look at a picture- and see myself- without clouded judgment, or regret. It’s flipping my head around in a fit of laughter and catching someone in the eye, and never looking away. But most of all? It’s contentment. Thank God.
