A Lacy Net of Silver

 

Tonight, my heart is yearning. I have not been unhappy, I was adequate and useful and cheerful and even productive today. I feel I handled all my situations with sufficient grace, and I hope that I was able to bless, just a little, the ones with whom I spent time. All the things I wanted to cross off my list are not crossed. The time I wanted for myself, I haven't gotten yet. I think I have managed one day without overreacting to my emotions or making myself a fool out of them. I wonder what I would think of me if I looked from the outside.

 Since I cannot, I still yearn. Because I am fond of the perspective I have today, I will not pin all my yearning on one thought or object, as I do some days. That one place may or may not be the fountainhead of my yearning tonight, or maybe...maybe it is only one fountainhead of a network of rivers and springs and trickles which, seen from far above, weave an intricate, lacy net of flashing, delicate silver. 

 Tonight I could call this yearning many things: the ache of watching a loved one or a stranger grope in the dark for an answer they imagine they do not want to find, the desire to move beyond the limits of my fear into all the possibilities of my dreams. The bashful wondering of whether, when the time comes, will I be what I should be? and what, if I had tried much harder or much less, could I have been now? I could call the yearning the unnamed reason a baby's smile can push back the clouds of misery, or I could call it the exhaustion of trying to puzzle out the ways of God. I could call it the feeling of wanting a friend to be there or a mother to soothe, or a father to stand, always protecting, in the very back of the picture, waiting in patient watch. I could call it the pleasure so deep it is pain, and pain so exquisite you wish it never to end, and the reason the smell of an old, old memory brings joy to the heart. 

 I could call it the emptiness when I wish for your voice and do not hear it, and I could call it that most curious and mysterious of human traits, that would not wish away even the ache or the longing.