Spring Has Sprung

The temperature is warmer, the trees are shyly offering tiny buds to the sun, and the flowers are beginning to color the once-drab desert terrain. The air holds a promise of infatuation. How I love the spring.

Herself and I are struggling with so many thoughts crowding about in our brains like bees awoken from hibernation. Much to say, and where to begin?

She would like to write about the difficulty of enduring the long hours her Beloved spends working. She plainly says that she rarely sees him, or that he does not do things around the house because he is hardly ever there, but those simple statements belie the complexity of emotions she hides. She misses him. She is lonely. She does not want to be like other women she knows, counting the hours and the nights that their husbands are away and withholding affection for the ransom of attention.

She knows that everything he does has a purpose and a meaning, and she never begrudges him the time away. She would also like him to have opportunities to enjoy his hobbies, even if it means that she sees him even less. Yet, it is so difficult to refrain from asking, "When will you be home?" Even though she knows the only answer he can give is, "I don't know." It is hard, and she does not have the right words.

She would like too, to write about her friends, who have been life rafts when the tide of loneliness has threatened to wash her out to sea. They warm her heart and bring her joy. They keep her company and talk to her. They listen and support her when she is self-critical and grumpy. They tolerate when she e-mails them with mundane blather. They let her make them muffins. They recount her favorite types of jokes, and they hug her. They let her help them.

It is soothing to her soul to care for them. Yet admitting how fond she is of them makes her too well aware of the risk she has taken in making friends. Where will she find the strength to do without them, if she must? They are her strength. How can she explain? She does not have the right words.

She knows the shapes and the shadows of these thoughts, yet cannot paint a verbal picture clearly enough to satisfy her.

She and I will search until the right words make themselves plain. In the erstwhile, we will borrow once more from one of our favorite poets:

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

- Kahlil Gibran