To Being Clueless

Without you, I might be paralyzed.

 

Not knowing what’s coming is one of the greatest assets I have.

I probably would have gone to college, but without you, I would not have fallen in love, certainly not so many times. Telling a woman, a friend of a friend, a stranger, at lunch one day that I was I was in love, it was my first time, amazing. Like we were the same person.

And she smiled a God-they’re-so-cute-when-they’re-young smile and told me she remembered her first love. “It’s great, really. Enjoy it.” I was furious that she would lump this love, this one true deepest expression of the meaning of the universe in with whatever sorry-ass experience she had 15 years ago.

She was right, of course. And if I knew the lesson in store for me, if I knew the years it would take to tangle and then untangle, I’m sure I would have refused it.

I might have refused moving up north. I knew about snow and short winter days. I didn’t know about spring, the thankless tiny blooms of snowdrops and crocuses, the snow in May. In Texas, by May, the crepe myrtles are showy and roses crowd around fences and up gates like noisy party guests. Texas doesn’t wait patiently for spring, does not applaud the smallest, most imperceptible signs of it. But here? We are grateful if the furnace doesn’t kick on all afternoon, grateful for a light jacket and not the parka. We have faith the warm weather will come, though we do not feel it yet. Had I known this was spring, this is spring every year, I would have never moved.

Had I known, I would have never bought a house. I would have invested more when I was younger (though I don’t know with what money) and I would written more with less fear. I would have cared less about what I was trying to say, the point I was trying to make, and more about the words I have and even more about the words I did not.

I think about what’s ahead, knowing more now than ever. I have a better sense of what can go wrong and how deeply it will hurt and how long that hurt will last. But I don’t know what form it will take so I spend the day saying yes, more, please. Thank you.