like a cat on a hot tin roof

then jump off the roof, maggie, jump off it. now cats jump off roofs and they land uninjured. do it. jump.

 

 xxx

we browsed netflix around eleven. with the television glowing, mummering. pablo curled up with his nose at his toes, slumbering, sighing.

and we were in one of those moods. those indecisive, can't-make-our-minds-up-to-save-our-life kind of mood. twenty minutes later, we found it. cat on a hot tin roof. i'd never seen it, and with the recent passing of liz, i thought it apt.

and i sat. never has a movie so mesmerized and enchanted me. at not since marlon brando in a streetcar named desire, have i so swooned over a fifties leading man. paul newman is glowing in this movie. seriously so strong, complex and beautifully tormented. i ate it up.

and there is a line near the beginning of the movie. where maggie is standing near the fence with big daddy, and she tells him that she has a million emotions running around in her mind. waiting to be lived. waiting to be felt.

and how beautiful. to think there are still some emotions i haven't tapped into yet. haven't felt in my core. i've felt sadness, but i'll feel it deeper one day. i've been scared, hurt and overjoyed, but there are elements of those feelings that i've still yet to process. and there are emotions i haven't given names to yet, because they haven't entered my life.

what do you call the emotion when your child drives away to college? standing alone on the campus lawn, watching your world get smaller as the footsteps between you grow. or walking away from your retirement party. pulling out of that parking space for the last time. looking into your baby's eyes for the first time. getting unexpected phone calls in the middle of the afternoon that change your life.

there are emotions i've yet to feel. some i hope i never do, and some i can't wait to experience. but like elizabeth so passionately declares later in the movie, i'm alive. and as long as i am, i'll get the glorious honor of feeling. deeply. ferverantly. and without fear. because the tin on this roof is hot, and i'm not afraid of heights.

to the other grandparents

there is another couple out there who i don't know, but whose life will intersect mine in a powerful, beautiful and permanent way. i prayed for this couple last night. around midnight in my dark bedroom. and again this morning, shuffling through the sunrise behind closed blinds.

the parents of the person my child will one day marry. this child of mine that exists only as a dream. a recurring one, filled with images of sunbathed kitchens and crayons on the table. cartoons on saturday morning and pictures on the front lawn on sunday morning. this child that is still a few years away, but present on my mind.

what were they doing last night? are they married yet? will they marry? did he reach across the pillows last night and hold her? for my sake, i hope they have good genes. and teeth.

robert's mama wrote me a little note one time and said that she was praying for me as soon as robert was born. i love that idea. of praying for someone you don't know or haven't met yet. i prayed for robert before i knew him, too.

and i've never thought to pray for this other couple. down the road or across the universe. but, God willing, we will share the sweetest years of our lives together. we will sit across the aisle from each other in a little chapel. we'll sit anxiously in a hospital waiting room for hours, and then, we will become grandparents together. we'll share in holidays, birthdays and deaths.

i sometimes think about the fact that i'm going to meet someone who will change the axis of my world for the rest of my life, and i don't even have that person's name picked out yet. but somewhere there was a woman last night, and hopefully a man too, whose lives will also be changed. first when they have their baby, then when their baby meets my baby.

and the crazy, twirling, teeny tiny world spins madly on.