Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Response

Don't you think that to wrap someone up in a blanket is such a considerate and generous act of kindness?


D, in answer to this question that I posed in my last post, commented "Yes, why do you mention that?"
And I want to post my response: 


D,
I mention it, my friend, because I am surrounded by these wrapped moments - 

at the end of every yoga class that you lead me through you wrap me in a blanket, 

I often see my mother wrap my two year old daughter in her 'blanky' like an oversized newborn and hold her tight, just as once she held me, and as I held and hold all my children,

as I lay moaning and whining with cramping innards a few weeks ago my own 8 year old son saw me and of his own accord wrapped me with all the consideration and empathy of any sweet mother, 

every night I wrap my children in their beds, sing to them and send them off to sleep and dreams, 

and when our recent lost came in from the cold, it was the only act that made any sense to me, wrap him.

I mention it because it embodies a state that I seek -  presence.
Because it says " I see you. I know you. I will comfort you. I am here for you."

I mention it because, in my mind, presence is the essence of mothering and wrapping a true selfless act of love.

I mention it because I see friends, women, wives so lost and bamboozled by the 'performance' of motherhood, sisterhood, wife, worker, consumer, maker, and on and on, that they have stopped seeing these simple but overwhelming gifts that they both give and receive,  so intent on the grandiose gesture, the smallest most poignant gifts go unnoticed. 

That now I can sit still enough to notice how full my life is of these wrapped moments is an unfathomable blessing. 

Thank you for wrapping me D, every time it fills me up. 

GG

7 comments:

Tania said...

Exhaaaaaaale. You make me teary more often than is decent. Good to hear you are being so well tucked in.

D said...

HI G,

Hmmm. Great thoughts. Right on the knocker. I agree on all fronts.

My very mad and wise friend Rosanna says "Fuck all this incapacity for people to define 'love'. It's presence. If you love, be present."

Wrapping, tucking in IS, the quintessential act of presence. I think perhaps because it asks nothing of the wrapee. It's without expectation. When we wrap we are also saying "I'll wait."

I used to see an acupuncturist in Tokyo. I saw him fortnightly.

His assistant would lay you down on a bed to wait for him (no waiting room). In a small dark cubicle she would tuck you warmly and tightly into a sheeted and blanketed rest until he came. As he treated me, he would gently and thoughtfully lift the blankets from the part of the body that he would work on. His movements were slow and strong.

When the treatment finished he would (not the assistant)again tuck me in and say "Sleep. I'll come wake you when you're ready."

I remember acknowledging to myself at the time that the therapy he gave me may not have had anything to do with acupuncture and everything to do with being tucked in, unconditionally.

Banana Yoshimoto wrote a beautiful set of shorts in a book called 'Asleep". I have it if you want to borrow it. One of the stories was of a woman who has a job much like a hooker, but her task was to sit awake watching her clients sleep. That was her job. But the absence of being cared for while sleeping near killed her.

Thanks G.

xx
D

Gillian Marsden said...

. . . mm as I read this beautiful text G, I too was recalling Rosanna's love is presence . . . and I just love D's extension of that: 'I'll wait' . . . it also makes me think of earlier ideas moving between us in this invisible space, of the smallest, unflashy gestures of creativity, of love, of creativity, those two interchangeables - mmm. I like this.

thank you both as always xx

D said...

me too gilliana: small flashes of creativity and love ...

Mrs Smith said...

Nice one ladies. Presence, Creativity and Love.

So love is being wrapped in a hot blanky.

or being wrapped with a hotty in a blanky.

depending on your mood ...

Love, hotties and blankies be with you all.


GG

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SmitoniusAndSonata said...

Yes , the extension of a hug .