Mi Madre

Beautiful.

Photo credit: Betty Casale (My dad's mom.)

Forget 2 Years Ago...Try 40 Years Ago Today!

40 years ago today, my mom and dad were getting married. My mom was 19 & my dad was 20. He sold his stereo out of his car so they had gas money to get to Sevierville, Tennessee for their honeymoon. I know their marriage probably hasn't always been easy ( the words marriage and easy probably shouldn't even be legally allowed in the same sentence), but tonight they could have gone anywhere in the world to celebrate (they've come a long way, financially, since that August night of 1971), and instead, they chose to go to Sevierville to honor the last 40 years they've spent together. When I heard those were their plans, I just loved it. FORTY YEARS. I'm in awe and full of love for these two.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
— Rumi

That other day running underneath this one like an old videotape...

Perhaps the hardest thing about losing a lover is

to watch the year repeat its days.

It is as if I could dip my hand down

into time and scoop up

blue and green lozenges of April heat

a year ago in another country.

I can feel that other day running underneath this one

like an old videotape"

-Anne Carson

"The Glass Essay"

Vows

We got to our hotel, which was amazingly drenched in artistic history. Famous poets, writers, painters, philosophers stayed there and created and conversed in the room we slept in. D.H. Lawrence painted the windows in the bathroom where I got dressed in the early dark of the morning. The afternoon before, as we were checking in, I pulled a book off the shelf in the lobby and the page fell open to this poem. I read this as part of my wedding vows.

V

AND think, there will something come forth from us.
We two, folded so small together,
There will something come forth from us.
Children, acts, utterance
Perhaps only happiness.

Perhaps only happiness will come forth from us.
Old sorrow, and new happiness.
Only that one newness.

But that is all I want.
And I am sure of that.
We are sure of that.


VI

AND yet all the while you are you, you are not me.
And I am I, I am never you.
How awfully distinct and far off from each other's being we are!

Yet I am glad.
I am so glad there is always you beyond my scope,
Something that stands over,
Something I shall never be,
That I shall always wonder over, and wait for,
Look for like the breath of life as long as I live,
Still waiting for you, however old you are, and I am,
I shall always wonder over you, and look for you.

And you will always be with me.
I shall never cease to be filled with newness,
Having you near me.


D. H. Lawrence's poem: Last Two stanzas of "Wedlock"

This day two years ago....

I was as restless as I am tonight, but I was excited. I had a beautiful wedding dress I couldn't wait to put on, and I was about to get up in an hour to put it on in a beautiful bathroom with windows painted by D.H. Lawrence and marry my best friend at sunrise on a cliff in New Mexico. I'm so sad, but I also want to still honor this day as one of the most perfect days of my life, because it was. Even if I never could have imagined things being so drastically different now. Even if all that remains of this day is that dress hanging in a closet. Sigh. Remembering.

Patty Griffin is the Spitfire Songstress of My Heart....