We, sailors of this earth...

I push my finger down here, gran-dada. My four fingers push down too, dada. Shoulder, chest, neck of the strongest tree. Hold me up, hold me tight. You are my gran-dada.

N’er will I let you go, my wee head of yarn. Your eyes are my eyes. We look across the sea like sailors of an ancient watch…quiet-like…while others chatter on. Little pluck of my heart, where do you find this reverence? Of all that is full force, unknown, and deserving of thanksgiving…

Gran-dada, carry me across the grass and set me within the waves. Hold tight to my coat tail.  Gran, gran, the breath of the wave pushes against me. My eyes squinch like yours. Where does the sea go when it swallows, dada? Where does it sleep? Can it feel my fingers touch it, splat, splat, splat? Da da, da da, stallion manes and crashing hooves chase me down the sand! Nothing can catch me except you, dada.  

Little fingers, will you become these worn, storied hands of mine? Will yours continue to touch the world like they do now? Is it merely a matter now of your being so close to its ground? Will they grow up and away, tracing the world in polished, kept and tidy ways? Do I yearn always to go to sea so that once again that which holds me up is a hand’s reach away? Wee head, come to me so that I may have something to hold against my hands again, to feel that some portion of the earth meets the resistance of my hands…hands sloughing off their callouses, losing their partnership with rope and wood and tar…now that I’m returned to land. 

Spin, spin, spin me, gran-dada, the silly gull screeching such and so above.  Taller…that I can see across the ocean’s edge. Where? How? Why does she breathe so loudly? What does she say? My finger pushes down on your shoulder here.  My four fingers over here. My head and your head, hard and warm and curly together. Salted breaths, we squint with sea eyes. We see the sea, don’t we, dada?

Yes, my yarn, we see the sea.   

To pause and look around...

Love looks here.

From deep within the kitchen, grandmother steps away from the hearthfire and looks out...at daughter-mother, at grandson-son, at doggie-friend, and son-husband-father.  Love tumbles along these connect-the-dot heart paths.  For the moment, the love is smooth and soft, bathed in summer sun, warming the floorboards that squeak with comforting familiarity.  The pie is baking, the meringue just catching its toasted caramel color.  Lilacs tumble in the breeze and diffuse the memories of childhoods 1, 30, and 50 years old, but no one notices that...except to find their smiles feeling just a bit deeper than they were a moment before.  

Doggie-friend barks once, head and eyes tilting back for a moment’s confirmation, then barks two more times quickly in succession.  Can we play now?  Stick, grass, around the maple one and a half times.  The field.  Yes.  We run like the wind, because storybooks and poems are very often true.  

Mother-daughter opens the screen door, and inhales.  She smiles at her mother’s back, arms moving forwards and returning, forwards and returning, as she kneads the white bread of her every day.  Eyes fill with tears, because these things are so often overlooked in favor of the loan, the sore hip, the clothes to be mended, the husband distant in some concern.  The tears bring rains of joy as she reaches her towel-draped hands into the oven to take out their most favored ritual of communion.

Come together.  “Don’t throw anyone out of your heart.”  For within that place, even the greatest trials can be held and cared for, even the greatest pains can be softened and heard.  Love lets grow here.

Sweet steam from the pie trails about in the kitchen and weaves its way through warp and woof of its screens.  Porch reveling in the flowers of all its perfumes.  A momentary silence for us to pause and look around.

Doggie-friend bounds back upon the porch, little two feet follow, father smiles and opens the door, letting in these boundless-for-now energies, flowered memories, and the wafts of warmed lemon that had drifted outward, but decided they’d like to rejoin the family inside.  

Around the hearthfire.

Lovingkindness.

May it also be with you.