The Walrus & the Carpenter

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.” Alice in Wonderland

This particular verse from Alice has always spoken to me in times of reflection or change…it seemed appropriate to where I’ve been these last 2 weeks as I’ve been mentally walkabout sifting through thoughts, holding memories, wading back in time and touching places dear to my heart.

The time from Thanksgiving through pretty much past Christmas Day has power over me in that it brings back the year we met, shared 6 day apart birthdays, fell in love and began to make our plans for the day our lives would be lived as a couple. Thanksgiving 1969…I opened the front door to the next page of my life, which changed the instant I looked into those electric blue eyes and I never looked back until the day he died in May 2002.

I suppose my turning 60 yesterday and his being forever 51 had some small measure of responsibility for bringing on the thoughts more deeply than usual. Not so much that the number of my age is the cause…it’s a number and I have a wonderful role model in my 81 year old mother for why age and how you feel about it is often a matter of the mind…a number that represents the passage of time on this planet. It had more to do, I think with the fact that he will not see any of these years nor those to come.

Speaking to a dear friend, I told her that he was, at 51, in that place in his life where he was so content and comfortable in himself and in his own skin that he made others feel that way in theirs as well. I envy that a bit as I still, sometimes, feel alien in my own shell. Could he speak to me today, I think he would tell me, that all is as it is supposed to be and that his time had come to move on to what ever was next in this universe for him. He would tell me that life is out there and that I should reach out and grab it with both hands. That there is still magic and wonder to be experienced if I will let it be so. At least, it’s what I choose to believe.

8 ½ years now, I have been widowed…it once colored every aspect of my life…still does many. My children have flown the nest, making lives, mistakes and successes just as they should. And, though my grand still needs me for another year or so, it is time to figure out the next pages of this book and where the adventure goes from here. Time to make plans and dream dreams. That I get to do this with another heart once wounded as mine, feeling loved and being cherish, is a gift I never expected to share again. Once in this lifetime was something…but…twice…is…well…something spectacularly else.

I believe Jim would be happy Handyman and I managed to find each other in this oh, so crazy and jumbled universe by way of widowhood and WN. I know he believed that people can brought together though it seems they never should have met. He saw my graduation picture so many years ago…before he ever met me and 3,000 miles across the country from where I was…and told a friend “that’s the girl I’m going to marry.” I have to believe so too…I dreamed of him all through my childhood and teen aged years… a nebulous sort of shadowed being that filled my dreams at night…and never had the dream again the day I opened that front door…almost as if I’d dreamed him into life.

My Handyman was met on a whim of a trip to a meeting of also widowed in January, 2004. He touched a chord that drew us into a long distance friendship that changed to something else entirely the next time we met some months later. He took my hand to help me from the car, the electricity thrummed my skin and…oh, shit…I wuz 55 and gone again just as if I was 18. 6 years later, we are loving the life we are creating together and look forward to as many years as we are gifted to be together.

This year’s light melancholy has served well in reminding me of the joy of my past life and that of this current life. I am blessed to have both. All in all not such a bad ending to a 60^th birthday rumination.