Reminder
by Michael Ryan
Torment by appetite
is itself an appetite
dulled by inarticulate,
dogged, daily
loving-others-to-death—
as Chekhov put it, “compassion
down to your fingertips”—
looking on them as into the sun
not in the least for their sake
but slowly for your own
because it causes
the blinded soul to bloom
like deliciousness in dirt,
like beauty from hurt,
their light—their light—
pulls so surely. Let it.
When I was fourteen, my mother sat me down, her corduroy blue eyes careful, and said bluntly, “You’ll need to find a man who is as strong–or stronger–than you are. And that’s not gonna be easy.”
Before I married–which I’ve done twice, once at eighteen, then again at twenty-three– she sat with each of the young men who had in his proposal done what my father called “braving the wilds,” and asked them, “You do know, right, that you are marrying a full-blown Irish windstorm? She leads with her emotions, her heart–always–and god help ya, son, if you let her get bored.”
My father gave me away in St. Gabriel’s tiny beautiful sanctuary the first time, a Christmas wedding, the men in dove gray morning suits with tails, flowers the color of wine and ice entwined in my dark hair; the second time we shifted anxiously before a justice of the peace, a few friends in tow, the only other plan involving a run to the beach after. But both times, as my lips opened to form the words I do, I knew I didn’t–well, sort of–I loved each man in that moment but the until death do you part part? I knew, even as I said the words, that it wouldn’t take, that I’d leave.
Eventually. And I did. Both of them.
The first after only six months, and the second after almost four years, when I left with my first two beautiful children–my daughter, who looked at me with the most solemn version of my own round eyes, the child who had the steadiness I would never have, and my oldest son, my Traveler child, his fall of blond hair bobbing to the music he still hears, and whom I knew had inherited the leaving, the motion forward apparent, genetically encoded perhaps, even in his first trembling steps. The reasons for the marriages ending are myriad, and complicated, and excruciatingly boring this late in the game, and there’s enough blame to go around for all of us. I’ve refused marriage in the twenty years since, but have managed several stable relationships–one long-term that gave me the gift of my third child, the son who inherited his father’s Indian eyes but my willfulness and uncontrolled curiosity. In each case, even in these relationships that didn’t involve marriage, some particular morning flared above me, and I knew when I opened my eyes to the yellow of day, that I’d be packing, or calling around for a new place, beginning the tasks of whatever that leaving required.
Like whole-body hunger, an unbearable urge to pace, the need to leave moves like a tremor that echoes down my calves into the arches of my feet. This leaving for me didn’t–doesn’t–involve the traveling the Brother-Man craves to feed his soul, although I recognize, understand, the road’s call, and followed it myself more than a few times. For me, the leaving is more internal, less about land and more about loneliness, a desire to be alone. It is the rolling of my hands, opening and closing of my fingers, the push to pick things up and put them down again, a bone-stretching need to be by myself, alone in the roaring of my own brain, an unwillingness to share space, a desire humming on my skin to feel silence tick around me, to walk sock-footed into the kitchen and to see only one coffee cup in the silver bowl of the sink.
But as my mother warned my husbands and tried to warn me again and again, I lead with my heart. And I love men, everything about them, the way they look, smell, move–especially the way they move. I love how they think, their innate drive to solve or fix things. I love the physicality of them, the angles and planes, the squareness of their hands, the pulled broadness of their backs. I generally prefer the company of men even as friends, although I have in the past ten years made female friends whom I cherish beyond words.
I love loving, not just sex, but the extreme passion of it all, the sharing of meals, the unfolding knowing of another person, learning the intricacies and idiosyncrasies, the intimacy of tracing a well-known arm or curve of lip, the quietude in a shared routine.
So I met another loving lovely man, who gave me twelve years of stability and security and quiet assurance in his Vermonter’s stoicism. He cared for and loved my older two children as his own, fathered my youngest, and I loved him. We built a home, a life together. I threw myself into the relationship as I never had before. I flung myself and all that passion into motherhood, the children being the only people I’ve never even once had the desire to leave, thinking that this would cure the restlessness, sate the need to leave. I had, it seemed, all I should have wanted. Or needed. Until it wasn’t anymore.
So I left. Again.
Again, there were other reasons–a new job, a new state for me, but the truth was I had already left. And I was more aware than ever of this cycle of motion, this pushing toward something, someone, somewhere, that would eventually quell the seeking. Over the years, in the alone times, i deliberately put myself into situations where the men would have no expectations of my staying, only having relationships with married men, men who had to leave themselves, return to their wives and lives, and leave me to the solitude of my own work, the onlyness of the life I was creating for myself. Surrounded by monogamy, I sought out a therapist. He put me on anti-depressants, warned me repeatedly that I would be hurt by these patterns. Disconnected from everything by the drugs, unable to write, unable to feel, I demanded to be taken off the meds, and waited for the passion–for anything–to return. The therapist used words like emotionally unavailable and fear of commitment. I didn’t think I feared commitment. I committed to the men I married. I committed to my Vermonter. It simply didn’t sustain. I came to think of myself as a serial monogamist. Right or wrong. Windstorm or Traveler.
I made the conscious decision that I prefer to feel, for however long it may last, or however fleeting it might prove. Or for whatever pain it might bring. I’m learning to accept my contradictory nature and needs, hearing my mother’s advice about men from those early teen years, seeking strength and tolerance, being wary of anyone who might try to hold me too tightly. It’s lonely at times, but being more aware, more conscious of who I really am, will, I hope, allow me to avoid hurting another man by my departure. I also think–hope–that I might still find him, the one I won’t leave. But I’ve learned–come to terms with–the risk this entails, learned intimately the “beauty from hurt,” the only way I think this blinded soul can even make its way to bloom.
Liam and I talked about the leaving. He saw it in me, understood it personally having done it himself, but he also advised me, just over a year ago as we sat in the cricketed Virginia darkness, that there comes a time when one must learn to stay. I told him I didn’t know how to do that–wasn’t sure that I would ever know. We smoked and I told him I figured I’d probably already scared the right one off. He laughed, leaned back his head, and said, “If he’s scared, he’s not the right one anyway.” He patted my hand. “Ah yes, we are difficult people.” He drew deeply on his cigarette, leaned into the dark night air, and a palpable feeling of contentment radiated from him. Obviously thinking of his own dear Tree, the wife he loved so clearly, his voice softened. “It’ll happen,” he said. “You’ll find someone. And when you do, it’ll be like coming home.”
I want to believe that.
