Fire and Ice

"Fifty-fifty, fire and ice," Joni Mitchell sings in Be Cool. 

The lighted trees in the park outside my window glow all night and the amber light seems hot enough to melt the ice sculptures carved in honor of Winter Carnival, but hot and cold seem to have found their balance here in downtown St. Paul.

My divorced life has been hot and cold. I've wished Mr. Ex dead. I've wished he would come back to me. I've wanted him jilted by his new love, disbarred, dismembered, discarded by our daughters, but I'm finding that this winter I can't work up the heat for that sort of wrath. The frozen Mississippi River is stalled between its banks and I'm wondering if my molten flow of rage is just temporarily stalled, too or if I'm really getting to the other side of this monstrous heartbreak. You're a fool if you can't keep cool, Joni says, and yeah, I have this image in my head where I'm stepping out of a river of fire, done with being that angry love-sick fool and newly baptized in a realization that I can't quite put into words.

I don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But I do believe in something divine that resides in each of us. I believe fervently in love as a force beyond all imagining and that this supreme energy survives death and that the love of a person dear to us  visits us across the miles and even from beyond the grave in sometimes very tangible ways.

July of '07 to January '09 is a long time and I have been borne across these months by love from a distance and love close enough to put its arms around me and hold me until morning.

Friends, family, fellow writers, in-laws (I refuse to think of them as "ex") strangers on airplanes, taxi drivers, and fellow bloggers I may never meet face-to-face have given solace, understanding, and pure, pure love. Without it, I'd be standing on the bridge eyeing the icy water below instead of marveling at how fresh snow glitters--really glitters--under the streetlights, and yes, dreaming  of spring.