Proudly dogwood

My friend told me recently that the source of his sadness was that he had been so ready to love but the subject of his adoration moved away from him. I shared with him that Donta kept canceling plans with me or claiming a broken phone or generally not calling back. I had held off on investing myself in him for quite awhile when he initially showed interest in me but, now that I'm excited, I can't quite catch a hold of him. He drifts out of my reach.

It's hard not to blame ourselves for the change of the currents. You think, but I was navigating this ship! I knew where we were going! How did we end up here? Love, I guess, is when both people are willing to face the open water and meditate on the wind together.

Perhaps we derive so much of our imagery of love from nature because, in Genesis, it is God's first expression of tenderness--a gift, for us. A heavenly valentine. I've been reading Annie Dillard recently and found myself moved by the following passage she wrote on trees:

"Sycamores are among the last trees to go into leaf; in the fall, they are the first to shed. They make sweet food in green broad leaves for a while--leaves wide as plates--and then go wild and wave their long white arms. In ancient Rome men honored the sycamore--in the form of its cousin, the Oriental plane--by watering its roots with wine. Xerxes, I read, "halted his unwieldly army for days that he might contemplate to his satisfaction" the beauty of a single sycamore.

"You are Xerxes in Persia. Your army spreads on a vast and arid peneplain... you call to you all your sad captains, and give the order to halt. You have seen the tree with the lights in it, haven't you? You must have. Xerxes buffeted on a plain, ambition drained in a puff. That fusillade halts any army in its tracks. Your men are bewildered; they lean on their spears, sucking the rinds of gourds. There is nothing to catch the eye in this flatness, nothing but a hollow, hammering sky, a waste of sedge in the lee of windblown rocks, a meagre ribbon of scrub willow tracing a slumbering watercourse... and that sycamore. You saw it; you still stand rapt and mute, exalted, remembering or not remembering over a period of days to shade your head with your robe.

""He had its form wrought upon a medal of gold to help him remember it the rest of his life." Your teeth are chattering; it is just before dawn and you have started briefly from your daze... But it goes without saying, doesn't it, Xerxes, that no gold medal worn around your neck will bring back that glad hour, keep those lights kindled so long as you live, forever present? Pascal saw it. He grabbed pen and paper; he managed to scrawl one word, FEU; he wore that scrap of paper sewn in his shirt the rest of his life. I don't know what Pascal saw. I saw a cedar. Xerxes saw a sycamore" (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek pgs 87-88).

I told my friend that one day someone will see us. Someone will stop the army of their busy schedule--just for him. Someone will contemplate me for days. Someone will water his roots with their words. All the world will become flat in comparison to my loud laugh, his smile. We deserve that kind of care and attention. And we will have it, one day.

I had an entirely fabulous day today for the first time in a few weeks. The sun was shining and I had a delicious sandwich while walking down the street. A stranger told me that I am beautiful. A friend I haven't spoken to in months called while I ate lemon sorbet. I talked to cats on the sidewalk and in the bookstore. I met a new neighbor who calls herself T-Bird. I played Boggle with a roommate. I began to read again with excitement (Foucault's Discipline and Punishment, of all things). Suddenly I knew that Donta would finally call today and, without a strategy, it could ruin my day and take all of this away from me, the self-certainty and the cockiness that has saved me from giving in to tears. I decided that if he did try to reach me, I would wait and return his call another day.

When the phone rang this evening I was playfully arguing with my roommates about coursework. I waved the phone around to show who was calling. I didn't answer. I felt good about it. I thought about the sycamores and cedars and how I have never seen a tree cry.