decided to check email before heading to bed. i’m glad i did.
in the mailbox was an email from my son. my 25 year old son, with whom i have not spoken in many, many years.
it is difficult to describe, the reaction. oddly neutral. i mean, there is that part deep in the back of my head, where the memories live, that is dancing great, giddy celebratory steps. and there is the part closer to the surface that quietly ponders and factors probability for being beneficial to him.
i read the words and let them wash over me. so much in them… both in what they say and what they do not… and what they point to as well as what they indicate by deliberately pointing away from it.
and i smile for those places where he tells me of things that mark him my son. he doesn’t know they do. he writes of them as if he is the only one who really understands how it feels.
i sit here and wonder if i will be able to show him he was never so alone.
it has been a long day. i have worked harder today on behalf of a dream and ideal than i have had the honor of doing in quite some time. and now, having just read this email from my son… i sit here and shoo the thoughts away so i can find the true state of mind from which this must be considered.
i called this a surprise. in truth, it is not. i knew when my daughter first said they were back in touch this would not be too far from arrival. first and foremost because i know my daughter. but also because i know how things work. that my son was willing to be in touch with her at all points to at the very least, a curiousity.
i am so thankful that mindfulness is a concept i have to work with in this moment. and that patience is a hard-won skill over these last years. and that a willingness to simply be still and listen is something i can manage at all.
i will sleep on this. and very likely meditate on it for some time. and then, undertake a reply.
most of all in this moment, i breathe for him. there is pain there. may i be able to relieve it. may i be directed by the peerless ones or may they intercede that any act be set to good ends.
om benza sattva hum
om mani padme hum