The complications of loving you (Mary Oliver & I)

“from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which is the only way to love, isn't it? this isn't a playground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. therefore i have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods that hold you in the center of my world. and i say to my body: grow thinner still. and i say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. and i say to my heart: rave on.” 
― Mary Oliver, Thirst

{this business of romance and dating and falling in love and getting hitched

and making babies and birthing babies and loving babies and adopting babies 

and tending to babies and fretting over sick babies and reconnecting with partners and 

booking in date nights and returning to family roots and making friends and relying on friends

and needing mothers and needing fathers and needing love and giving love and giving love

and giving love and getting love and getting love and giving love and getting love

anyone else exhausted?

then replenished again buy the promise of that 

heady euphoria when children say to you

(out of the blue and unsolicited by chocolate or cookies or another such sweet treat)

"I love you"}

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. 

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument. 

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.” 
― Mary Oliver

{my son is 16

he's a young man now

i turned around and he shifted

it felt sudden but it was not

it was more of an epic moment viewed in slow motion

cinematic, heart wrenching  - soundtrack included.

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go” 
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

{i'm baffled about the future

i keep wondering who he'll fall in love with

have babies with

travel with

argue with}

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?” 
― Mary Oliver

{i have been blessed with  the kind of love you find

in  a Nicholas Sparks novel - too good to be true 

happy endings all day long

tear jerking moments all day long}

“Sometimes I need
only to stand
wherever I am 
to be blessed.” 
― Mary Oliver, Evidence: Poems

{i have no frigging idea what I've done to deserve this love

truly I don't}

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” 
― Mary Oliver

{my tribe are super heroic 

(and both deserve medals in patience and forgiveness)

my tribe help me see the world they way Mary Oliver does}

“Oh Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing towards you.” 
― Mary Oliver, Thirst