5 things I wish I knew
1 You will wake up one morning in the midst of the worst storm and no matter how much you have prepared it will shock you with its fierceness and its strength. You will watch as the most majestic become base things lying in broken heaps. But just outside your ruin, at a secret door, someone quietly waits. When you cannot help yourself, they are there with gusto, bearing a promise and a hug. 2 The myth of closure is told by old men who never had to make their own supper. Ask any woman who has borne a child if the heart of their womb ever fully closed after being ripped apart by separation. If I have forgotten you, I have forgotten myself. 3 My mother made my wedding dress— shantung silk with covered buttons down the back. If you asked her, she would say that the pattern was more important than my idea of where the stitches should go. Patterns can tell you a lot of things. They can even tell you if something is never going to fit the way it should. 4 Autumn days used to be the beginning now, they are a winding down— a quick turning of another page —the vestibule where we wait for the holiday doors to open for another celebration. We put the same things into pretty boxes, and wonder why we aren't surprised when they are opened. 5 Everyone has a river of secrets flowing just underneath the pleasantries of the season. Watch how the banks overflow when someone dips their toe where it doesn't belong. Before you know what hit you, the fairytale goes wrong. Try to see your reflection in the muddy waters of that flood. Impossible. Our topography has changed. We will never rebuild what has washed away.
