Morning Moos

On the treadmill.  So much easier when Biggest Loser or So You Think You can Dance are on my DVR.  This morning, two nights ago, who knows when in real life, a very tall, very cute, funny, earnest dancer was dancing the gut wrenching choreography of Mia Michaels for the second time.  Hoping to stay.  More than one more day – to get the gig.  Auditions, how I remember them, and how I hate them.

They put him through the mill.  But he made it.  For one more round, anyway, and after, having sobbed his life nearly out on the stage with relief and shock, he told the girl with the mic, “I wanted to tell them, I love dance more than anyone else beside me on that stage, more than anyone in this room.  I love it so much.  I love it.”

And I heard myself say, “Oh, Tony.”  Because it struck me sad.  And I started thinking of what I love that much.

Home.  I love home.  I love the person who built this home with me, and the people who came to life and lived and left it.  I love them so much.  I love the way that light comes down through the leaves in front of the windows.  And the dogs on the porch.  I love where I came from, my parents, my interesting and determined and honorable parents, and Keven and Michael, who are not both brothers – I love Keven’s name, and her the stubborn determination she inherited, and Michael’s imagination.  I love my Aunt Jeannie, and I love my Aunt Donna.  I love knowing they are alive, and that I am in their hearts.

I love that Char has a breakfast date. (Right now)

I love Rachel, so very much, and Geneva and Misty and Michelle.  I love being cherished and remembered.  Such a rare and beautiful thing.  I love the memories of Sisters, Ore.  I love waking up in the woods.  I love waking up after an ocean storm.  I love singing with Joanne and Gaye.  Especially gospel music – so great.  I love the feeling of wipe-out I sometimes get after a congregational hymn, when they send the music back up at me, and up higher than that.

I love that a woman can have a poignant dream for forty eight years and still get it.  I love the spring and autumn worlds that remind me that I have a heart, and not just a list wanting check marks.  I love faith, and reading and making things and owning grass and wanting, and not wanting.  I love sleep when it comes, and I love waking when it’s free of anxious responsibility (I think I do, who knows?).  I love it when they say yes to a manuscript and I love it when the reviews come in and they get it (and there was something to get – yay).

I love gardens, and wish someone would make one for me.  I love the sunlight, pouring like buttered syrup over the lip of the mountains.  I love the quiet before that, and the loud and living caroling of morning birds.  I love riding in the mountains.  Breathing. Drinking water.  Feeling my brain work, will I , nill I.  I love being able to touch, and hear and smell and the colors of sight – I love that they are so fragile, and hate that, too.

I love chances.  I love second chances.  I love the idea of God.  I love the reality of God.  I love reading scripture and being at once confused and enlightened and puzzled and challenged.  I love that people are all over the place, and the way they all dress, so different, and the songs they sing, so different.  I love kind people and good people and sad people – but mostly, people with deep honor and well meaning, who are generous with their own responses to the world.  I love seeing people have pure, joyous, font-like moments in life.

These things, I did not have to audition for.  I mean, I don’t think I did.  If that’s what we did before we came here, I have no memory of it.  The world is a dangerous place, but I love it when people work together and come up with things like toilets and nose drops and antibiotics and vaccines and clean milk and strawberries in winter and computers that connect us in such weird and fabulous ways.  I love what we can do – what we can do so easily for each other.  Like music.  The harmony of humanity, rich and layered – especially when the surface tension breaks and it all flows freely.

In some ways, crying is a validation of all this.  And never is the door completely closed against our movement.

I even love the dog who is barking at the door just now, reality and demand on the doorstep of a moment’s spiritual awareness.  Gotta go finish the workout and save the horses from their own short-sighted hunger. 

But I love even that.