Falling In
One of my favorite columnists, Martha Beck, wrote this in the June issue of O (Oprah) Magazine:
Whatever you hold sacred, you’ll find that an unguarded broken heart is the ideal instrument for absorbing it.
If you fall into intimacy without resistance, despite your alarm, either you will fall into love, which is exquisite, or love will fall into you, which is more exquisite still. Do it enough, and you may just lose your fear of falling. You’ll get better at missing the ground, at keeping a crushed heart open so that love can find all the broken pieces.
These words could not have been better timed for me this weekend. Ever notice how life seems to send you little volleys of lessons, events that happen rapidfire so there’s no way really to avoid them, no time to duck behind your own defenses? Not only have I been contemplating the intense relationship between love and loss, but the Universe keeps sending me these little situations and reminders that force my heart painfully, exquisitely open. That and having been mighty low on estrogen for the last several days. (Got my period yesterday.)
The baby bird was the first volley. Such a sweet, injured thing. So ordinary in his plight, as a meager house sparrow, that the audobon society and the other places that accept injured wild animals don’t take them in. I felt so grateful for the nearly toothless lady at the Wild Bird Rehabilitation center (which was just a little blue and white house off big, busy Evans Boulevard) who devotes her time to humanely treating even baby house sparrows and releasing them back into the crazy, mean, exhilarating world–on voluntary donations. This is what that woman does in the world–or at least one thing she does. Amazing.
The ride to the bird house was where my heart was transported. There I was, driving down the road, cradling a tiny sparrow wrapped in a pink cloth napkin on my lap, praying fiercely. He’d apparently gone into shock somewhere between traffic lights and had stopped scratching at the box I’d put him in. I peered into the box and he was just lying on his side barely breathing. Worried he was going to die right there, which for some reason became unbearable, I picked him up and cradled him in my lap for warmth. Seeing that tiny ribcage move up and down, looking into those weary eyes, my soul was somehow locked onto his until we got there. Handing him over to that capable, compassionate woman, my heart was a wide open, fluttery-achy thing. A $30 donation was nothing for the peace of mind it gave me to know that I’d tried. It was so worth trying.
Then yesterday, up at Kris’s house in Platteville, I found myself wedded to the fates of two more babies, this time stray kittens hiding out in her alley. They’re products of a poor unspayed mama cat that drops a litter every spring. Most, of course, end up feral and hungry or smeared on the street. Big deal; ordinary bummer. But standing in the car port yanking giant weeds and feeling the cowering, wide-eyed presence of this sweet little grey tabby, I finally could no longer resist connecting despite all urges to just leave well enough alone. Before I knew it, I had coaxed that one and her tiny black counterpart onto a towel in a cardboard box in my car, and was driving them home.
No, I didn’t keep them! In fact, a few minutes ago they went home with friends of Marshall’s who just happened to be looking to get (one!) kitten, and came to see them when Marshall conveyed my email. (Big gratitude again, my friend.) But the twenty four hours I got to spend with those two were exquisite. Just watching scared, shaky, big-eyed babies begin to relax, and then eat, and then sleep, sniff around, play, cuddle up, receive touch, purr, and become semi-secure mammals again was…a miracle. Happy as I am that Jane and her husband opened their hearts enough to take them both into their home, I bawled my eyes out when they were gone. Because my heart couldn’t help but love them fully while I had them.
Love, and then loss. Loss that reminds us how much we’re capable of loving, how much it means to love. Loss that makes us want to shut down our hearts the next time we come across a broken bird, a hungry animal, a hurting human being.
On my way home with the kittens, Kris found out that her oldest friend Kristi lost her brother in a car accident Friday night. He was her only sibling; they were 15 months apart and very close. I can’t imagine what I would do if I got that kind of call about Bill. My heart would shatter into a million pieces. I can’t imagine living without him. I can’t imagine my family after that kind of loss. The vacuum must be horrific.
But there have to be no clearer, purer, more excruciating moments of love for Greg than what Kristi and her family are feeling right now, as all hearts are breaking and life feels brutally ugly and unfair. Not that anyone’s thinking about anything but their pain and the sudden extinguishing of a life. Love so overwhelming, so impossible it breaks our hearts, over and over. But if our hearts didn’t break, we’d be more than half dead, like a lot of folks are, wouldn’t we? Even as I can’t believe how many times my heart’s been broken–and I haven’t been through a fraction of the tragedy others have survived–I have to believe that in the healing we are being prepared for more love, more attachment, and the reality of loss all over again.
Martha Beck continues:
And the next time you feel the vertiginous sensation of the floor disappearing, even as your reflexes tell you to duck and grab, you’ll hear an even deeper instinct saying, Fall in! Fall in!
What can we do, then, but be hopelessly hope-filled humans, loving and falling again and again. We can’t resist.
And don’t even get me started about how much this has to do with my mothering urges.
