Three Hours Difference

     Since December, but for a few weeks time,  I have lived in two time zones, not quite here, not quite there.  For someone used to living at odd hours, pre-dawn risings, wee-hour noctavigance, it's not a physically taxing way to live.  I can manage, connect, have an almost 'normal morning, noon and night of a relationship.  I realize though, as I near the end of it, as I make the leap toward a new time and place and life, that such a life demands a price.  I have always been a threshold dweller, my liminality part and parcel of every hour of every day.  Still, I've had a foot in one realm and have, despite that small corner, claimed myself a citizen of that place and time, even if I felt like a visitor.  

     There is a price to every happy ending.  We see that in fairy tales.  The Goose Girl loses her beloved horse, Falada.  The Handless Maiden loses her hands.  Snow White looses her father and her rightful place and for a time her life.  I think if we knew all we would face, all we would give up, we might never venture out our front doors.  The 20-20 perspective of hindsight is a gift because it only comes in retrospect.  We might be plotless creatures if life didn't throw us curves and dips in our paths.  

     I've known some of what I will lose by making this particular leap.  One thing, perhaps the most precious thing I've put at risk, is my relationship with my daughter.  For 18 years my primary identity has been her mother.  As the bits and pieces of my other identities like wife and lover fell away, I turned that energy to her.  Knowing the risk of putting so much of my happiness in the hands of someone whose destiny is to leave and to find her own life, i did it anyway, happy to be handless, heartless, willing to pay what ever blood price for some sense of the deep connection I did not find in my marriage.

     My leaving has been hard on my daughter, as it would be.  The thing I had hoped I would never put her through, I am putting her through.  She has, for the most part, put on a brave front, not letting me see her own inner turmoil.  This is a hurt I can't really help her with since it is a hurt I am causing.  This last weekend she suffered a string of health issues - a pulled muscle, an unknown rash - and I took care of her like I have always done.  The muscle healed but the rash got worse, requiring a second call to Kaiser and a doctor's appointment.  She may have shingles.  We find that out today.  I know stress can be a factor in shingles, depleting the immune system, allowing the chicken pox virus to attack the nervous system.  I have played a part in this and she will pay her blood price for my decision.  Ripples are inevitable, no matter how hard we try to prevent them.

     "I don't want you to leave.  Who's going take care of me when I'm sick.  No one can take care of me like you," she sobbed as I held her.  

     She knows that shingles won't make me stay, that things are already in motion, that mid-leap there's nothing to do but fall and wait for your landing.  She understands that the fierce resolve I have always used for her benefit, I'm using for myself this time.  And so we talk about how beyond the time we are offshore, I'm just a phone call or text away.  I can fly here easily, and she can fly to me, a few hours time span.  I'm not here but it doesn't mean, I'm not here.  I've spent a good part of my life living in different times and places.  I lived with my father every other weekend.  My heart was with a man, 500 miles away for a span of years although I do not think his heart ever resided with me.  I went to school for three years, a week away from family every month.  Loving across time zones was hard, is hard, but something I've had some practice doing.  She will learn that these few months, learn that mother-love is a forever thing, strong and sure even when you, the child, are so thick in your own life you hardly feel it, forget.  

    This I wrote recently, wrestling, yet again with the time zones, with the vast span between us.  It never ceases to amaze me how large a chasm three hours can be:

Three Hours Difference

There you are lying in velvet dark,

deep in conversation with the constellations,

your old friends from this neck of the woods,

and new acquaintances borrowed for a time

from southern realms,

a friendly reminder of a world beyond this,

of a looking glass you can step through,

perhaps already have,

Alice in your own Wonderland,

as large as life and twice as natural.

Here I am sweltering in this preview of summer

in the thick of spring.

I am browning, stirring, thickening,

feeding everyone but myself.

This house is stuffed full of familiar smells,

of memories, good and bad,

and I am re-membering every day,

over and over,

the brittle bones of a near happiness,

my life, I thought once,

a life still,

but not mine at all.

There you are gregarious in your tropical way,

warm, open, fragrant as

sandalwood, frangipani, and night blooming jasmine,

your skin salty

from daily reminders of

our watery origins. 

You were not born here,

but were reborn,

and every day

you slip from Mother Ocean.

regenerated,

yourself at last.

Here I sink into my hermitage,

a person of the desert,

even living as I do

between two rivers,

in this City of Trees.

My skin smells of dust

And the faint scent of

the dried flowers of happier times,

and I have nearly forgotten

my watery origins,

only my dreams,

full of the sea.

I was not born here.

but I died here,

near enough anyways,

and I’ve waited years

to be resurrected,

woken to life at last,

by a kiss.

There,

you talk to the woman you love,

coax her through the ethers,

through the hedge of briars,

through the glass coffin,

through every unhappy ending,

to your time,

to your place,

to your watery life,

to your waking dream and

your happily ever after.

Here,

I talk to the man I love,

will myself through the ethers

through the hedge of briars,

through the glass coffin.

past this unhappy ending,

to your time,

your place,

to all the marvelous possibilities

of a watery life,

of a waking dream,

of love

of happily ever after.

“Soon, Baby,” you say.

“Soon, baby” I reply.

You wondering maybe,

me wondering too,

why it took 30 years

to span three hours,

to share one time,

one place,

one life,

one happily ever after.