Relationship roundup

Don't get excited, not mine, but others.

So it has been quite a few days of watching and reacting to a lot of relationships.

When I was first divorced, I was so sensitive to relationship drama. I think I wrote about it here before.

Now I am less sensitive (read freaked out) to it yet since I have reawakened my empathic side, I am still hypersensitive to the emotions I encounter, relationship or not.

So, I generally hesitate to attend weddings and other gatherings celebrating relationships, or at least I try to steel myself to them.

This time around somehow I signed up for a three day wedding. I comforted myself with the thought that I had watched this relationship grow. Not from its germination but certainly from the seedling stage.

I watched it sway in the storms of trouble, bend but not break. I watched as the two of them grew towards each other and the life they envision for themselves.

I can attest to the beauty and resilience of the union. But I also know that storms are not only in their past. So when we were shopping for wedding cards and S. suggested that we shouldn't entertain buying any that included the words forever or always, I understood his sentiment completely.

It may seem crass or pessimistic, but sometimes realistic expectations breed a truer bond. We ended up with two cards. One with sweet sentiments that were not pie in the sky but apropos another that had us laughing so hard in the card aisle that someone asked us to show him the card. He read it and said it was perfect for his brother who was also getting married that weekend.

And it was a gorgeous weekend in a fantastic setting with old and new friends entertaining, supporting and loving each other gently and reassuringly. Love is truly a beautiful and wonderful thing.

Yesterday I got to spend some time with one of my favorite couples in the world... In part, talking about and wondering through how they would grow from a couple to a family that will include three generations in one house.

So maybe after all that serious love fest, it hit me particularly hard to wake up to the neighbors yelling at each other in the backyard. I could tell it was an old fight that really had nothing to do with whatever they were yelling about. I could, if I tried, trace out the fault lines as they cracked back to old wounds and project their trajectory as the get wider and more dangerously unstabling.

It reminded me of too many shouting matches where words were wielded like weapons relentlessly and recklessly.

I sat paralyzed listening, remembering and regretting all the time spent yelling.

I had already read the news that my new nephew or niece was no longer. I had already ached and worried about how my brother and sister-in-law would weather this particular storm.

I thought it might keep me inside wallowing in all that sadness. But I rallied and did a little retail therapy and now I am seeing it with a little more perspective.

(still have not downloaded photos, I will get there...)

Location:Trestle Glen Rd,Oakland,United States