The Great Divide

Gray light this morning. Fog and winter sun. Always an inducement for contemplation.

We continue to sort through boxes of old papers and mementos, making little decisions about what to throw out and what to keep. In an emotional compromise, Lydia has begun taking pictures of items we are unsure of. Later, we can look at old crayon creations on film (a totally anachronistic term these days) and still lighten our load today. Thus, we fill boxes with cut, colored, and pasted products of our children’s early education to recycle.

Lyd works diligently at the process, keeping me company, papers spread out on a couch where I can see her work.  In my chair I read and sip at my ever-present cup of coffee. A few days ago, I noticed that her work had stopped. She was reading a small notebook. Its size suggested that it was probably an old diary. She was lost in her reading for nearly an hour. Other than a comment about a nickname she used to call her sister, a bit of self- talk not directed at me, she was quiet.

I knew that she was far away; she was back in her childhood, reliving and recalling her young life from those pages. She was in a time before I knew her, on the other side of that divide that separates us all, visiting personal experiences, that made her who she is today. A place I could not go, even if she shared the experience with me.

*************

There is a gap between the you and the you

Where past and present meet beside an old song

Or smell

Vague and not, the radio skip on the night highway

Just beyond nowhere

The thrill is gone between dips in the road

The great divide between person and personality

Where I can only wonder and not go

(Did I ever tell you about the year we knocked down the Christmas tree playing hide and seek

The floor covered with shards of glass older than we two together

Incandescent like my mother’s fury)

And what stories do you have for me

To span the in between

tight stitches to close the gap

Five decades and still

The great divide

As I say, the sorting and tossing has a very real effect on us. In a true sense we are throwing out much of our past, the markers and mementoes. Bits of ephemera. The objective correlative of meditation.

We pause for a day now and then, but mostly we move forward. The way becomes clearer.

Blessings

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