Time Stops, Then Races On To Catch Up

Fall is golden rod and beauty berry, wild daisies and all sorts of purple and yellow, black-eyed susans dancing in the pure, unfiltered light of a field.

Five minutes ago it was summer and that field was filled with blackberries, offering their fruit among the danger of their thorns, fingers reaching and plucking, being stuck and bleeding, juice and blood both.

Ten minutes ago it was spring and the dogwoods bloomed and were great clouds of white against blue sky, riot of redbud, shy salmon, delicate bloom of tung tree, great purple banks of azaleas, wisteria like grapes, hanging low off their yet-unleaved vines.

Fifteen minutes ago it was winter, the camellias blooming red and pink, white and purple, striped and pure color against glossy green leaves.

In five seconds it will be winter again. I see the camellias budding up, swelling in anticipation of their flower-birth.

This is how fast the seasons change. I swear.
This is why I take pictures, say "This is what spring looks like (fall, winter, summer) because it goes so fast I need to freeze it in that second, that glorious bloom of whatever it is.

And we swirl along with it all, panting to catch up, running, skimming the days like the water birds at the ocean's edges.

But some days, we stop. Time stops and we stop with it. A birth. The whole world stops for a moment as we take in a child's first breath, first cry, first reaching out for the breast.
A death. We hold a hand in a room filled with light or with protective, holy dimness, and a last breath is taken, we hold our own breath, waiting for what will not come and we may cry and we may smile, both, just as at a birth.

There are smaller stoppings of time. A song heard in a certain way can stop time. A lover's smile or touch can do that. Words on a page or a screen that resonate somewhere inside our bones can stop time for an instant. The sight of a field of flowers, or just one bloom, bee-buzzed and bending to the insect's weight and need. A meeting of someone you know will be a heart-friend forever. That tiny bump of time's abrupt pause, telling us to pay attention. Pay attention.

Time will gather itself and go on, even for the most profound of stoppings. That is the way of it.
But if we are lucky, we remember. We have paid attention, we have paid tribute with that attention. We remember.

Jessie is bringing home a young man tonight. She met him last summer over mandolins. I can see fingers flying (I was not there), I can see eyes looking up over fret boards, meeting and smiles forming.

How brave we are to let our hearts unmoor themselves from the safe anchor of solitude and yet, how we crave to find that person we can trust to catch our hearts as we send them to drift in the direction of those eyes, that smile.

And then! Oh. When hearts have been caught and words have been said and touch has been exchanged, to bring that person home, to BE that person being brought home to meet...the family because you never know- this might be one of those moments where time stops, or at least where the engine of it jutters awkwardly for a moment, the gears may grind (how can they not?) when we all meet and there is so much going on in that first moment (do you hear the whining of the belts, do you hear the clunk, the catch, the cough of the world?) when we meet him and he meets us and there is Jessie in the middle and I am nervous for us all.

Yes. Seriously. I am.
Poor Vergil.
Poor Jessie.
Poor us.
No matter how nonjudgmental we want to think we are- all of us- how can there help but be a moment, at least, an instant of judgment on all parts? If Jessie loves this man, then we must love him too, of course, but will it be a love-at-first-sight? Will we see what she sees? Will we find him worthy of our precious Jessie's heart?
And how will we look to him? Our crazy family, the tall and the short, the hippies and the not-so, the former jock daddy who hunts and the loony mama who cooks and fusses and worries too much? The brother, the sisters- will we resemble a wall made of different sort of rocks the poor man has to figure out how to get over, under, through?
Oh. I hope not. I hope he knows we are here to welcome him from that very first second, as awkward as it may be. We are not a wall, just a family of arms and hearts which encircle each other tightly, but never too tightly. We let in people all the time, joyfully, and with great interest.

And poor Jessie. Will she be worried that he will like us? That we will like him?
Oh. I hope not.
I hope that it all goes so well.
I will apologize for my stew which I cooked too long. I will apologize for the dogs who bark too loudly. I will apologize for this and for that, because that's what I do.
But I will take last summer's blackberries out of the freezer to make a dessert. I will pick this fall's greens from the garden to make a salad. I will have today's flowers from the woods and fields on the table.
I will welcome this man and so will we all on this fall evening and even as the moon rises and the earth hurtles itself through space and the tides rise and fall to the rhythm of the universe and our hearts beat their everlasting-unto-death tattoo to rush our blood through us, I feel a coming hesitation as something possibly profound occurs.

We shall see, won't we?

I hope he likes us. (She whispers nervously.)

I hope love just powers us all back up to speed, quickly and with grace.
I think it will. I have great faith in that. And then, as time catches up, I hope we just have some pure-T fun.

We shall pay attention, we shall pay tribute to the moment with smiles. We will remember that we are all just folks, coming together on this fall evening, as perfect and imperfect a group of folks you'll ever want to meet.

I wonder if we'll dance, which is another way of stopping time, my favorite form of prayer.
Well, if not tonight, soon. Under this moon or that.
Time leaps ahead but we won't know what it holds until we get there. In the dance. As we hold hands and stop time, as we laugh and stop time, as we shuffle our feet and stick out our butts and glide across the speeding universe on the wooden boards of this house.