If you are a long time reader, you know my Childhood was far from perfect – not perfectly bad… but complicated enough for it to be pretty cocky in the knowledge that it would spit me out struggling with sadness or anger or bitterness.  The themes of that time seem so crushing now, as I marvel at my own children.

There is no such thing as true love.

People will always disappoint you.

Don’t trust.

Don’t love.

Don’t hope.

Just get through ‘it’.

It being life.

I never wanted to ‘just get through it‘.

It didn’t fit, didn’t sit right.

So that was the beginning of the end of any control my Childhood had on me. I just wasn’t acting the way it thought I would, or should.  It would frantically try to trap me under its thumb, and I would bob and weave and land just out of reach.  I just wasn’t buying what my Childhood was selling.

Just wasn’t pickin’ up what it was thrown’ down.

I didn’t want my Childhood dead to me. Never wanted or tried to pretend it didn’t exist, or wasn’t a really important part of me. It just chaffed to think of it at the wheel, or even in the front seat, on my life’s roadtrip.

So not dead, but banished.

To my Beneath.

You know, my Beneath.

You have one too, we all do.

Most people tend to think of the stuff ‘beneath the surface’ of our lives as being tough stuff, bad stuff.  The stuff we have battled, vanquished… survived.

Clearly the stuff best described using war analogies.

But our Beneaths also include our most beautiful realizations, our incredible moments of clarity, our wonderfuls.

They are really just made up of the stuff we don’t lead with in our everyday conversations. They are the mysterious and unique ebbs and flows and undercurrents that make us who we are.  If they are shared, they are often revealed slowly and over time, to those we have grown to love and those who have earned our trust.

Because both the tough stuff in life, and the miraculous stuff in life have the power to bring us to our knees.

Don’t believe me?

My Childhood did not actually bring me to my knees.

But my twelve year-old son, opening his eyes as he came out of a coma?

Ya. That did.

Sharing of our Beneaths requires us to be vulnerable.

To open ourselves up and risk someone not being understanding enough or delicate enough or accepting enough or just flat-out respectful enough of the elemental events and circumstances we have experienced – those which have reached into our core and ignited terror or wonder or awe.

That which has truly rocked our world.

Our Beneaths are some of the most precious parts of our selves, and are ours alone to tend to and share, when and how and where we want to.

The sharing of them is a gift we give – sometimes with fanfare, but often without – to those close to us.

But one of the greatest gifts?

Actually having people in our lives that we want to share our Beneaths with, and who know how to receive them, what to do with them… how to keep them safe… without us having to say a word.

How lucky are we, when we have that.

People who don’t try to brush away the emotions that clutch the hands of our memories, but who can sit and be with us… and our Beneaths.

And still see us as whole, and imperfect, and beautiful.

Wowza.

There is so much that comes out of our live’s most poignant moments.

So much pain, or joy.

Sorrow, blessings.

And choices.

Always choices.

Close off from the world, be with ourselves… it’s easier… maybe we won’t get hurt.

Or.

Open up our hearts and minds and see what miracles others might reveal to us.

And though it has not been without its challenges and disappointments and demands, I opted for the latter path.  And that, with a nod to Mr. Robert Frost…

Has made all the difference.

Thanks for readin’.

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