Thursday, May 31, 2012

My daughter M picked me up from the airport today wearing a shirt as blue as the ocean. Why does it amaze me that she is a grown-up? Why does it seem both like yesterday and a million years ago that I dropped her off at college with the split between her dad and me still running off us like fresh blood? In the car M and I talked about family and the narrow ideas that some still hold about what that means. M and her sister have a brother who will be 42 this summer. The younger of their two brothers born to their dad and his new wife has not yet celebrated his first birthday. Our family is bi-coastal, multi-racial and cultural, straight and lesbian, Democrat and Republican, carnivorous and vegan, smoking and non, atheist, Hindu, Catholic, and god-knows-what. We are deep and wide and not necessarily the calm blue ocean. We are tsunami just as much as we are tranquility, and almost five years out from the end of my marriage I see more and more of the shoreline of the continent of my happiness. And oddy, much of that happiness is due, I think, to my divorce. We are the sum of our experience, and experience is mysterious and deep.

8 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

Oh hell yes! This is the human race! This is how we live.
Love it.

Wrinkling Daily said...

wow. yes it is. so very well said.

The New Floor Company said...

I hope I can play what you just said on some instrument or another.

Elizabeth said...

I love your words juxtaposed with that photo -- that photo, I adore.

Suz said...

yep that was impressive

loved the line about fresh blood...so good so visual

Families who love make it work

who knew the boat you would need to find that new land of happiness
and who is that little girl in the picture? I see you in her

Thordis Niela Simonsen said...

I love the vision of a continent of happiness!!

Steph(anie) said...

Denise, may I sit at your feet a spell? My marriage seems to be ending. Perhaps it was doomed before it began, I don't know. Do you have any advice for me? Specifically in regard to how not to treat the person that has been the stay at home parent (my husband in this case). And tell me I'll stop crying.

Milky Tea said...

You are going deep-sea diving in the Sea of Mercies! Forget the oxygen tank and jump in, tsunami or not... Lovely and liverly.

TK.