Thinking of love

Late last year, someone I had known in college, but hadn’t seen in more than twenty years, messaged me. We got together for coffee, and he updated on people I had known in college.

“I always thought of him as the one who got away,” I said when we got around to this one guy I had really liked but was too scared to do anything about.

I do think of him as the one who got away, but I could not believe I had actually said it out loud. Vulnerability is not my strong suit, so this verbal admission surprised me.

Later that same week, I heard a radio show about regret, and I recalled that conversation. I regret that I let my fears determine my future.

I started to think of other times when I had closed the door on the possibility of relationship. I remembered a man I had met at the end of my summer semester in Spain. He was an architect in Algericas, and I was about to leave the country. I said I would write when I got home, but I didn’t. To what end?

Similarly, the guy in upstate New York I had met on a weekend trip to Ithaca. He wrote me beautiful love letters and even drove the 200 miles to see me several times. But I was not going to move to New York, and he had no desire to move to Pennsylvania, so what was the point of pursuing a relationship?

Geographically undesirable, I thought both times.

Looking back, I can see that pragmatism was the coverup for my fear.

Last week, I watched the movie Frozen (not for the first time, but the first time in several years).

My mom died last June, and throughout the final months of her life, I had advised my sisters (and told myself) to let it go when people said things that were critical of the care we were giving my mom.

I must have said let it go hundreds of times in those last six months of my mom’s life.

After my mom died and people continued to express their opinions about what we should have or could have done to extend my mom’s life (even though she was 95 years old and had major health issues), I suggested to my sisters that we get Elsa t-shirts that said let it go.

I decided to watch Frozen again if for no other reason than to see Elsa letting go.

The line that caught my attention this time, though, was only an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.

I wondered if my heart is frozen. Had all those times when I had said “no” to the possibility of love frozen my heart? Had shutting down on potential closed me to opportunity?

What can I learn from my past decisions and regrets?  How do I move past fear to freedom? How do I let go and become open to love?

Love lost

A few weeks ago, the movie Letters to Juliet popped into my mind and I couldn’t seem to let it go. I’d seen it before, but I decided to rent it.

The movie is based on a non-fiction book about notes posted on the wall outside the house of Juliet of Verona and the “secretaries” who respond to the notes. I have never been to Verona, but apparently there really is a house called Casa di Giulietta—Juliet’s House—at Via Cappello, 23, Verona, with a courtyard where people leave letters.The movie is about an English woman who abandoned her Italian lover fifty years earlier and returns to search for him.

As I watched this movie the other night, I remembered a man I had met more than thirty years ago.

I had gone with a friend to upstate New York to support her at the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. I was against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, so I resonated with the anti-nuclear message of this group.But the encampment challenged me in ways I had not expected, and my discomfort intensified throughout that first day. I was too conventional for this kind of demonstration and found myself thinking of how I could get away.

By the end of that first day, my inner voice was saying, Leave now and don’t come back.

My distress continued into that evening, and I went for a run to regain my equilibrium.

We were staying with my friend’s cousin at his farm. The countryside was beautiful—rolling hills, farmlands and forests. The run was somewhat strenuous, but it felt good to exert myself physically as I grappled with my emotional dilemma.And then on a steep hill, something snapped in my back and pain shot down my leg. I stood on the side of the road, bent over in agony, sobbing—and far from where I was staying. Somehow I managed to hobble home and then crumpled to the living room floor. Someone brought me an icepack and aspirin.

For several hours I just lay there, feeling relief from staying still.

At some point, a man came into the living room and introduced himself as Ross, a friend of the people I was staying with; he lived in their renovated chicken coop.

For the rest of that day, Ross kept me company. He was a landscaper by trade, but a poet by temperament. We talked for most of the night.

The next day, my host took me to a chiropractor; one adjustment eased the pain enough that I was able to sit in a car for the ride home.

Ross wrote beautiful, romantic letters to me and even came to visit. He was smitten; I was scared.I said the distance between Ithaca and Philadelphia was too great—and our relationship ended before it really got started.

And yet, there he was in my memory as I watched a movie about love lost and found.

 

 

 

Does it bring you joy?

Does it bring you joy? Someone suggested asking this question when paring down my possessions.

After some pondering, I realized that when considering holding onto or getting rid of some possession, I am more apt to ask myself, would letting it go make me feel guilty?

I have been incredibly blessed by generous people throughout my life, and my house has lots of objects I received as gifts. I imagine if I had bought all of those things, it would be easier to let go of them, but so much of what I own has a story and a memory connected to it.

Is it possible to hold onto the memory and the story—and let go of the object?Many years ago, I read a book about holding onto the gifts of retreat.

Retreats can be sacred moments in life, creating space to step out of daily routines, clear my mind of everyday worries, and focus on God and God’s will for me. Retreats offer the opportunity to get some distance and perspective, to look at how I am living and to consider any needed course corrections.

While on retreat, I often talk with God about what in my life needs to go—usually old fears, insecurities, anxieties and hurts.Holding onto those insights from retreat once I am back in my daily routine can be a challenge. Daily prayer helps. Regular meetings with a spiritual director also help. This book suggested asking these questions about everyday situations:

• Is this what I really want?
• Will this matter tomorrow? In ten years? At the end of my life?
• What do I think? feel? need? want?

The second set of questions has been the easiest for me to answer because I can see how insignificant many everyday occurrences really are. These questions have helped me let go of a great deal of hurt and anger. How much energy am I going to give to something that really has very little long-term significance?

The other questions, though, continue to challenge me. Like the question about what brings me joy, asking what I want or need seems somewhat foreign to me. It must be the way I was raised—spend very little time or thought on my own needs; focus more on the needs of others.  This is also the message I take from the Bible.

Of course, I know that I do have wants and needs, and over the course of my life, I have come to see how much healthier I am when I get in touch with them.

So, what is it that brings me joy? The objects in my home? Or the memories attached to them?

It is definitely the memories that remind me how blessed I have been.

Last year, I committed to writing a “love” letter every day in February—a note to someone who had blessed my life and brought me joy. I called it twenty-eight days of love. I thank I will do that again.

 

Packing and Unpacking

I am still settling into my new house and unpacking—seemingly endless boxes—and figuring out what I can let go of, what to keep and where to put things. I have held onto lots of things through the years, including some very random mementos.

Some things have brought back surprising memories as I unpacked them:

My yearbook from Grant Junior High, which reminded me of my ninth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Weng, the teacher who had the greatest impact on my life. I wish I could find her to tell her how grateful I am.

A thank-you note from my niece Kristi when she was four or five (actually, her mother wrote it and Kristi signed it), thanking me for sewing her Halloween costume, which I don’t even remember. Kristi now has a four-year-old daughter.

The hand-embroidered doilies I got from Iwona, a Polish girl I lived with at l’Arche Calgary in 1990. Who could have known then that I would visit Poland nineteen years later?

So many pictures—some in albums and some in shoe boxes—going back to my parents’ dating days.

Cards and letters spanning more than fifty years, including post cards from a girl who lived four houses away from me—we were probably in third grade when she sent these post cards while on vacation at her cottage.

And love letters from a guy I met on a trip to upstate New York shortly after college. It was the summer of the Seneca Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Justice. I went to support a college friend, and I met Ross. He was such a romantic, and his letters are beautiful.

I know that most of my things have little or no intrinsic value, but right now, in this difficult time of transition, they have great value to me. While I am feeling disconnected, they anchor me to myself, offering me connections to my life and a sense of my personal history. I am deeply grateful for them.