It's Not Right

Red morning light spits through the shade; another day older closer to the grave. . .

I certainly wish that I could take credit for that opening line, but alas my best friend Bruce owns it.  I’m not even sure if it’s the opening line I needed to write to begin this post, but I love the combination of words, especially the word spits.  Who describes a sunrise, the start of a day like that?  I’ll tell you who:  the person who sees that it’s another day, there may be beauty in that red morning light, but when it wakes the person who has to get up and trudge through the dark in a world gone wrong (yep, same writer), you can bet it feels like the light is spitting – not casting its rays, not cascading, not peeping through the shade – but spitting.

Anyway, I might have had some dark thoughts this week, and I might have written a chapter or two about a very dark character; and I might have thrown words on a few personal pages.  But alas, I did not post on the blog because I just wasn’t in the mood to share any of those musings yet.

I didn’t have the kids all week.  The schedule during the summer months is a bit quirky - - - it’s a one week on, one week off schedule, Monday – Friday.  So, aside from basketball on Thursday (and for a brief period today), where I coached a team of seven kids that could shoot like Jordan, but had a tough time on rebounds and defense, I haven’t seen the kids since Monday.  Paige and Tony were on the team, and despite having lost every game (I never said I was a good coach on technique) during the past eight weeks, we had a ball (no pun intended). I will see them both again today as Paige tests for another belt in karate - - hi-ya!

But it’s not long enough.  It’s not often enough.  It’s not right.

I say that last line, and I feel like I’m constantly saying it about things, which makes me judgmental, a little narcissistic, and somewhat naïve about the world.

It’s not right that life is so short – that it’s not reaching the ripe old age of 80 or 85 anymore; it’s reaching that age without being murdered, without a drug overdose, without a mentally debilitating abuse, without a divorce, without some random health condition that lands you in the hospital for weeks, and ultimately leaves your children without a parent. 

It’s just not right.  It’s not right that the divorce broke my children’s hearts, and that I had some part in that breaking.  It’s not right that because I’ve been broken, I’m not likely to ever love hard enough to be that broken again.  I don’t know if that makes sense, but the song “The First Cut is the Deepest” hits a nerve once in a while.  I think I love better, and I love harder now, but I shrug off the vulnerabilities that are tied to that love.  I’ve told that to my significant other. . .  you can revel in my kindness and love, but you’ll never get in close enough to break my heart again.  

That’s not right.

Is it? I mean, it’s a different kind of love, I think.  It’s not the relationship that begins with hopes and dreams intact.  It’s the relationship that begins with the broken pieces of those hopes and dreams in a bag we carry on our shoulders.  The ones at the start of our marriages were like a wall of beauty.  We glanced at them, believed in them, and wanted so badly for them to be real.  Those illusions shattered, and we were left with the scraps – and we were also left with the beauty that was made from that illusion, namely our children – the tender-hearted, fissure-hearted byproducts of a marriage gone bad.  But with that beauty comes the ache of loving them in a world gone wrong.  With the dawn comes another day of not knowing the ending, of another potential for disappointment, another day of hard work; and a bag full of pieces of a future that broke.

For my sake, regarding the first cut being the deepest, I hope I’m wrong because I know that withholding of love and vulnerability is just not right.  It’s like throwing water on a fire, but never putting it out because the longing is there.

It’s not right that life is chaotic and always too short; heartbreaking and disappointing.  Yet, just by recognizing it, I suppose I am left with hope.  The red morning light might be spitting, but it’s still coming through the shade.

Though I’d like to end with a Bruce Song, I have to leave the epilogue to Bob Seger – who recognizes what I’m saying in these words from Fire Inside:

There's a hard moon risin' on the streets tonight

 There's a reckless feeling in your heart as you head out tonight

 Through the concrete canyons to the midtown light

 Where the latest neon promises are burning bright

 

 Past the open windows on the darker streets

 Where unseen angry voices flash and children cry

 Past the phony posers with their worn out lines

 The tired new money dressed to the nines

 The low life dealers with their bad designs

 And the dilettantes with their open minds

 

 You're out on the town, safe in the crowd

 Ready to go for the ride

 Searching the eyes, looking for clues

 There's no way you can hide

 The fire inside

 

 Well you've been to the clubs and the discoteques

 Where they deal one another from the bottom of a deck of promises

 Where the cautious loners and emotional wrecks

 Do an acting stretch as a way to hide the obvious

 And the lights go down and they dance real close

 And for one brief instant they pretend they're safe and warm

 

 Then the beat gets louder and the mood is gone

 The darkness scatters as the lights flash on

 They hold one another just a little too long

 And they move apart and then move on

 

 On to the street, on to the next

 Safe in the knowledge that they tried

 Faking the smile, hiding the pain

 Never satisfied

 The fire inside

 Fire inside

 

 Now the hour is late and he thinks you're asleep

 You listen to him dress and you listen to him leave

 like you knew he would

 You hear his car pull away in the street

 Then you move to the door and you lock it when

 he's gone for good

 

 Then you walk to the window and stare at the moon

 Riding high and lonesome through a starlit sky

 And it comes to you how it all slips away

 Youth and beauty are gone one day

 No matter what you dream or feel or say

 It ends in dust and disarray

 

 Like wind on the plains, sand through the glass

 Waves rolling in with the tide

 Dreams die hard and we watch them erode

 But we cannot be denied

 The fire inside