LETTERS FROM HOME: FEBRURARY IMPERFECTION AND PURIFICATION IN THE NAME OF LOVE

Feb. 10, 2000

Dear Leslie,

This month is named with a word that means purification. The Romans cleansed themselves in preparation for the orgies to follow.

February is more associated with love than with orgies, now. Love and purification, perfect mates.

I like February: black history, Mardi Gras and birthdays Lincoln's, Washington's, my grandmother's, my sister's and my friend David's.

My grandmother Ruby had her 94th birthday last week. We went to a restaurant to celebrate. She's in great shape. But my father still kids her about losing some hearing.

"You just wait until you get to be 94," she scraps back.

Grandma had the steak.

Valentine's Day we give tokens of our imperfection to our beloved. If our love can't be expressed with jewelry, flowers and candy, then how?

In college, I delivered flowers on Valentine's Day. I started doing it for the money, but something else became more important. It was the look on the women's faces, no matter what their ages, when they opened the door to see someone holding roses or a bouquet of spring flowers for them.

They became beautiful before my eyes, every one.

Every woman wants to be treated like a princess. "No," DC says, "I am a princess."

There is so much to learn about love.

To love is difficult, to withhold it so much easier and so destructive. We make unfair demands, then when they are unmet blame others for not giving us what we will not give them.

The deficiencies we defend are much worse for being denied because within the denial is blame for others. We are defending an idealized image of ourselves we can't hope to maintain, pure self-destruction.

What a difference to be honest about our faults, to embrace them, the ultimate purification.

A poem by Rumi says it better:

This being human is a guest house,

Every morning a new arrival

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

Empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

I do not always speak to DC with love. Sometimes the words or absence of words are punishment for some perceived slight, for not giving me what I will not give her. I complain that she is not paying attention so I withdraw, make it more difficult for us to connect when the opposite is what I want.

It is a facade, this separation between ourselves and others and between our "good" selves and the parts we would rather deny. To stop denying is to know others and love others in ways not expressed in Hallmark cards.

I know this and yet struggle to be kind, to be understanding, to act as if I know how to love.

At Christmas, DC's parents gave me a pillow embroidered with these words: "My goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am." There is far to go.

Love, Sam