Love and Pianos

There are many inexplicable things about love.
Why it finds us when we least expect it.
Why, once it has found us, we cannot let it go.
Why it is so all-consuming
Why it creates such a thin line between complete happiness and utter despair.
Why, even though we know it can hurt us, we will never stop looking for it.
Because that' what we do.
We, all of us, spend hours...days...months...years ..of our lives searching for love.

 Searching for Love by Juli Cady Ryan

And when we are not searching for it, we are imagining how it will make us feel.
How love will rock our world.
How  everything that once was grey will become bright and colourful..
How everything that was wrong, will suddenly seem right.
How it will make you want to skip down the street and dance round the kitchen, smile at strangers and wave at passing cars, commit random acts of kindness and hug everyone you see.

At least that's how we dream falling in love.

But as with everything in life, reality is never quite as we dream it.
And falling in love is rarely as rose-tinted as it should be.
The  best thing about it, is  the flutter of time just before it happens.
The days when  you have met someone and your heart is beginning to melt and the edges of your world are  beginning to turn hazy. 
The days when you stand there on the edge of your dreams, love shimmering before you, an ocean of beautifully swirling possibilities..
In front of you lies the happiness of all your tomorrows, behind you lies the sadness of all your yesterdays.
And for just that one moment, the moment before you begin to fall,  everything you've ever dreamt about love can be true.
There's a reason we call it " falling," in love.
Like falling, we cannot control how or when or why it happens.
Like falling, we do not know if someone will catch us before we hit the ground.
Like falling, we do not know if all that will happen is that we get hurt.
Like falling, we cannot stop it from happening.
Love is strange and undpredictable and frightening but somehow we want to fall into it.' 

I was talking about it with our friend in Germany this weekend.
" What if falling in love is a terrible experience for our kids," I say, " what if it all goes horribly wrong?"
For a moment he stops walking and watches as my teenage son and daughter walk nonchalantly into a Hamburg clothes shop.
He shrugs.
" Perhaps it will go wrong," he says, " but all the same, you have to let them try."
He looks at me, this friend of ours who wears his sadness, wrapped, like an invisible cloak, around his heart
If anyone understands how painful and sad love can be, it's him who, after all his searching, found  his soul-mate and lost her so suddenly and so soon, when their children were almost too young to remember.
" You just have to let them fall," he says, " In the end the right person will catch them."
He smiles at me.
And I know he's right.
Because the thing that I've forgotten is that it's not so much the " falling in," as the " being in," love that shapes our future and makes our days worth living.
It's the sharing of dreams and the planning of adventure.
It's the laughter and the tears and the certainty of togetherness.
It's the peace that comes with a sense of completeness and the knowledge that your search is over. 

Back in our friend's house, in the countryside near Hamburg, I stand looking at the shiny, black, well-cared-for piano that has pride of place in the living room.
" Do you or the kids play?" I ask.
He shakes his head.
" No, but when their mum and I dreamt of living in England, she always wanted her piano to be there. Only when we moved I wouldn't let her bring it. It would be much too big and heavy, I said."
I think about their house in England. 
It was where they were living when she died.
It was one of the dreams they shared, living in England until their kids were fluent in English. 
" You were right," I say, "it would have been hard to fit in a piano in that house."
" Maybe, " he says, brushing the polished lid with his fingertips, " but..." his words fade away, tinged almost five years later, with the despair of what-will-never-be. 
 " At least it's here now," he says quietly, " even if none of us ever play it. At least it's here now...." 
And that's the other side of love.
The part that makes us put a piano we will never play in our living room.
The part that makes us want to care for someone else completely.
The part that makes us want to keep them safe and stop anything bad from ever happening to them.
The part that makes us want to make all their wishes come true.
The part that makes us less selfish and more giving.
The part that makes us kinder and more humble.
The part that makes us forget about ourselves in the bringing of happiness to someone else.
That's the enormity and the mystery of love.

One of my friends has just texted me to say he is on the plane, heading home from Manila for Chinese New Year.
" Safe flight," I say, " I'm just writing a blog about love, anything you'd like to add?"
My phone is silent for so long I think he's not going to text back.
And then it beeps, a three word text:

" Love is good...?"

And perhaps it's as simple as that.

However scary love can be,  however many times we have to fall without knowing if someone will catch us, however long the search, in the end it's always worth it.
Because love is good and we are better for it, even if all you are left with are the dreams you shared and a piano in the living room.

White Witch Mornings

There's something grim about these grey, half-hearted February days.
 Spring is still too far away to fill us with hope and the holidays too long ago to remember. 
Even the weather is undecided.
" Has it snowed,' asks our 17 year old son, Joss, still rumpled and disgruntled from sleep.
"Almost but not quite," I say.
Joss groans.
It's not that he's imagining the beauty of a landscape covered in untouched, glistening whiteness but that he is dreaming of a school- closed " snow-day.'
And to be honest, in England, it doesn't take much snow for the country to grind to a halt, probably about about half a centimetre.
But this year, even that drama has evaded us.
It's just plain cold and damp.
Sometimes it's hard to remember why we stay in a gloomy, wintery England. 
The blue, fluffy-white-clouded skies are hard to imagine and the countryside is a long way from the scenes of idyllic rural beauty you see in the picture- perfect postcards.
Instead the skies are grey, the clouds are swollen with rain and the countryside is one big muddy field of rural slush.
At least that's how it looked from the window of my friend's car the other day as we drove through the West Sussex countryside towards our coffee date with a White Witch/ Druid-in-Training.
" I took the " powered by witchcraft sticker," off my car," she explains, throwing her door open to us, "  I realised it was freaking out my kids' friends every time we drove to school."
She laughs, the warm, rich  laugh I had forgotten.
It's been a while since we have spent any time together.
And I have the strange feeling that last time we met, she was a different person.
The beautiful mum who turned heads (especially dads') at school sports days, swirling through the crowds in her bright red, polka- dot dress with matching  shoes and lipstick.
The carefree mum who threw the wildest parties and told the raciest stories.
The coolest mum with the whackiest house.
The spontaneous mum who would pack up the children and the car and disappear off to Italy on a whim.
The lost mum with the restless, misunderstood soul, always searching for a way to fit in

Sherry- white witch, Druid-in-training, friend.

But not any more.
She has moved away from the city, living in a house near the sea that used to have a garden full of guinea pigs and a living room full of chickens roosting comfortably on the worn-out sofas.
The animals have gone now but the house is still overflowing with timeless trinkets and aritstic antiques just begging to be picked up and touched.  
Like everything else in her life, my friend has not made being a white witch into something pretentious or mysterious. 
 Instead it is simply a part of her every day life, a piece of who she is.  
Potions and powders stand in a cupboard with the salt and pepper grinders. 
 Tarot cards lie on the kitchen table, next to the coffee pot.
Huddled next to the fire, our hands warming round mugs of steaming coffee, she talks to us of Pagan festivals and age-old rituals, of telepathy and the orbs of energy that drift erratically round her house. 
" When I first started my Druid training," she says, tipping coal onto the fire, " I had a rebirthing.  They took me right back. It went so deep I couldn't move my arms or legs.  It was like I was part of the ground.  -Look down at your feet,- they said to me just before I went  under, -check what shoes you're wearing. Shoes are the best way to work out where and when you are-... So I did, when I was ready, I looked down at my feet, only I couldn't see them, couldn't see what  shoes I was wearing, because there were these whopping great kneecaps in the way. And when I turned around, I was guarding this man on a throne.  I think it was Caesar. It only turns out I was a big, strong Roman soldier in a past life... " 
She turns her faraway gaze back to us. 
" At least that explains why my kneecaps are too big for my legs and why I've always had this inexplicable love of Italy. "
She laughs and chats on.
And I watch her, trying to work out what has changed.
Why she seems so different.
And suddenly I know what it is.
She's stopped searching, stopped trying to fit in. 
She's no longer lost.
And I realise something, that in the end it doesn't matter whether you are a believer or a sceptic, whether you have been reborn or are simply living for today.
What matters is that you feel you have arrived, that you are where you want to be.. 
There is an indescribable comfort in talking about the intertwining of the past and present,  in knowing  somehow that we are, all of us, bound together by something deeper and more permanent than the here and now, 
And for the rest of the morning, sitting in that cluttered living room, warmed by the glow of the fire, caught somewhere between the supernatural and all-to-real present, it's hard not to feel tinged by magic.
Or perhaps that's what you always feel when you are sitting in the living room of a white witch who used to be a Roman soldier and who has, at last ( in this lifetime at least ) arrived at the place she wanted to be.

By the time we walk back past the "no-longer-powered-by-witchcraft-car,"  I have almost forgotten that it is a damp, grey English February morning.
" Mornings like that, just make you feel better," says my friend, opening her car door.
I nod.
I know exactly what she means.
My phone vibrates.
It's a message from Col, a friend from so long ago that I can almost feel my past and present intertwining as I read it.
" Landed in London at 6 this morning," he says the message , "Pretty dreary weather. Just looking out of window. Not even snow or slush to cheer me up.."
" I know," I start to type back, " bet you wish you'd just stayed in Singapore.  February is always so grim and gloomy here..."
I stop.
However hard I try, and even though I know it's February, I can't shake a sense of inner peace and wellbeing.
I'm wondering if it's a spell.
And hoping, if it is, that it will last, at least, until Spring..
I glance out of the window.
On the verge at the edge of the road,  I spy the first snowdrop of the year.
Its petals gleam white against the mud and slush.
" Look at me," it says, " I'm where I'm meant to be.  You know Spring won't be long."
I smile and delete the February moans and groans I was just about to send.
Instead I type:  " Hey Col.  Never mind the weather.  I'm just glad you've arrived."