Above the hotel gate, I saw a sign:
“International Conference on Inflammation of the Eye”
for those who have cried too much or not cried enough.
All of them with name tags on their lapels
like temporary nameplates in a cemetery or markers
in a botanical garden.
They approach one another as if sniffing, as if checking,
Who are you where are you from and when
was the last time you cried.
The subject of the morning session is “Sobbing:
The end of Crying or the Way It Begins.” Sobbing
as soul-stuttering and griefstones. Sobbing
as a valve or a loop that links cry to cry,
a loop that unravels easily, like a hair ribbon,
and the crying—hair that fans out in profusion, glorious.
Or a loop that pulls into an impossible knot—
sobbing like an oath, a testimony, a cure.
Back in their cubicles, the women translators are busy
translating fate to fate, cry to cry. At night they come home,
scrub the words from their lips, and with sobs of happiness
they start loving, their eyes aflame with joy.
Yehuda Amichai (2000, p. 147)
This speaks to a dynamic in our friendship I don't know how to articulate but is there and present.
It's 10:02 pm, and the tears keep coming. I haven't seen so many tears in our house since The Russell's moved to England. I actually thought we had made it to the end. We took the Haggard boys to dinner, because we wanted to have some company. Holly fell asleep after telling the kids goodnight, and I sat with them in the Colonel's room talking about our favorite times with Paul and David, and about the chances that we may see the little rascals again. The hope that we may someday connect again seemed to dull the ache enough for all of them, and they fell asleep.
So I snuck out of the room and decided to grab some cereal, as I had passed on hot dogs at Wienerschnitzel. I opened the fridge to grab some milk and saw this...
Clayton had decided, evidently, on returning from the airport, to write their names on a Sunny D (Paul's drink of choice) and on the jug of chocolate milk (David's favorite). He must have thought this would be a way of keeping them with us in their absence, at least until the drinks were finished (or the milk spoiled). Seeing the bottles was enough to make me hear their Korean accents as they each would ask for their drink... and this in turn was enough to turn on my tears again.
Two or three times today I have thought of Jon Foreman's words in Switchfoot's song, Yet, "If it doesn't break your heart it isn't love". We have five broken hearts in this house tonight. Thankfully, these little guys we quickly grew to love are just off on the next leg of their journey, and then they go home to their families. But our hearts hurt none the less. The crazy thing is a few years ago I would never have even let myself think it possible to love someone in less than three weeks. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, I would have made a logical reason in my head why we shouldn't host two South Korean boys for seventeen days.
My tears tonight, as you already know, come from many places. They come from a place of love and pride watching my boys welcome these guys in and then love (and play, and share, and fight) with them like brothers. They come from a renewed love for my wife watching her mother two more boys with her whole, beautiful heart. They come from an ache that says these days are fleeting, and that these seventeen days with these guys (that passed like a blink) are a clear metaphor for the years I get (God willing) with my own guys before my heart is broken again and again, and again. They also come from a nagging voice that tells me I wasted some time, grew grumpy and tired, got selfish and controlling, and let some magic slip away not quite realizing it until it was too late. And lastly, they come from a place that is just a mystery. They are tears that somehow, in all of this fragile, messy, beautiful thing called life... just cannot be held back.
"This is the hardest part" he said, his chest repressing a heave as he looks at me. He is a mix of fear, courage, inevitability and reluctance, and then he turns and we began the final ritual of the morning. He walks towards through the courtyard, I move to the farthest point so that when he turns for the last time before he disappears into a world I have little to do with, he can turn, our eyes meet. Mine reassuring him, his holding back the tears, mustering up the courage for the next 5 steps, the next 10 minuets, maybe the next 10 years. When I finally walk through the pack of the other parents my own tears flow. I am unable and unwilling to stop them.
I think he is right, the hardest part is always letting go of the safety of connection and stepping into a place that is contingent, volatile, evaluative. Surrender. You don't know if what you are letting go of and turning from is actually "in you" or only resident in the relationship you turn from. I want to shout to him "It's in you!" I think in various ways I have been saying this to him since I held him in my arms in Guatemala City. I understand in my 40's through you, my mom, Ted, meditation, the Holy Spirit that it is in fact 'in me'. But it does not make the turn away and towards any easier in the actual event of turning (I remember sitting on my porch saying goodbye to you). Today I am learning how to trust the turn. There is a joy and pain attached to it all - and in these events I can see the beauty.
Our time together over the holiday was wonderful and I feel so lucky to be my kid's dad, to be married to Michele. My boys are growing with a wide eyed wonder, a creativity and strength and interest that is beautiful and deep. Their relationships are becoming friendships and they have a lifeworld that is particular to each of them but collectively in communion. It's all so fragile, it's all so beautiful.
