"Timing is of the essence..."
"Timing is everything..."
"It is all about the timing..."
So many phrases in our lives have to do with timing. I
certainly experienced that yesterday. Since before lunch, I had been intending
to get to the grocery store. One phone call after another kept delaying my
departure. At one point, I had my shoes on, my purse over my shoulder, and
my keys in my hand just as one of the window cleaning crews pulled in, blocking my
vehicle in the garage. I slipped my shoes off, set my purse and keys down, and
said to myself, "Oh, well, they have been working so hard, and they will
not be there long. I can wait."
Imagine my surprise and delight to see one of my dearest
friends who was just arriving in town after a three-day drive back to Michigan
from Florida! Had I been at the store any of the other times I planned, I would
have missed seeing her and welcoming her home.
The timing was perfect, because this woman is not just
any friend.
We have shared a lot over the years, but a very special bond was forged between
the three of us when she was by our side last fall when I discovered I had a
very aggressive mass growing in my abdomen. She accompanied us to the hospital
the day of my surgery. In pre-op, I was told I needed to remove my wedding band. It would not fit safely on any of his fingers, but it slipped right on her finger. When the doctors and nurses came in, I introduced her as, "My husband's other wife."
She
is the one who sat with him, awaiting news of my fate. She is the one who drove
me to my post-surgical visit. She was holding the workings of our trembling hearts in her hand, and just as she was keeping my wedding ring safe, our hearts were safe with her.
Something of the raw stuff of all of that came flooding back to me this
morning when I read what (for me) was a very emotional article titled "My Husband's Other Wife." It touched me deeply, and it might touch you,
too. The author's husband had been married briefly to a woman who died from breast cancer not long after they were married. The cancer and treatments made it impossible for them to have a child. These tender thoughts are at the heart of the story:
When our
daughter was 8 she found the same box of photos that I had seen that day I
moved in. She brought them downstairs to our bedroom and said she wanted to
look at the old pictures of Daddy. She asked about the pretty, dark-haired
woman always standing next to him. My husband told her that was Robin.
After a few
more minutes she looked up and said, "There are so many pictures of
her."
"Dad loved
her," I said.
"If you
loved her so much, why didn't you marry her?" she asked her father.
He looked at
me, and I nodded.
"I
did," he replied.
Our daughter
looked at the picture she was holding in her hand, her eyes widening, then at
me. It was like one of those moments in Dickens when a foundling discovers her
true origins.
"It's like
I have two mothers," she said in a kind of astonishment.
What an innocent view of love. And what amazing wisdom to create a safe enough space for that innocence to be expressed freely.
As I sit at my computer writing, I
am watching three pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks outside my window. A few
moments ago, one male flew straight to my window, fluttered back and forth in front
of me, then landed on the pavement below my window looking up at me. This about grosbeak from Animal Speak, by Ted Andrews:
This totem [grosbeak] can help teach us to heal all the old wounds and
hurts of family origin...A grosbeak has a beautiful melodious voice. This is
significant. A melody is formed by a relationship between notes. A single note
does not make a melody. The grosbeak can help us to see our family
relationships as a true melody—each note separate but part of a larger whole.
They can help us to see how our family has affected our life patterns...It can
help you in seeing family patterns that you have brought over into your present
life, along with your present family members.
In ways too
complex and maybe even too intimate for this post, it feels as though my heart is healing so completely from those
ancient wounds and that you now are being allowed to view love and life through the
eyes of that innocence again. What wonderful timing for Mother's Day!
