Epic Love

I think about William Faulkner a lot. Yeats, too. I feel a kenship with them aside from writing. They, too, had great loves that obsessed them for their entire lives. They both eventually married those loves, and stayed together until death parted them. I have no idea if that will come to pass for me, especially since I am happy in my marriage.

I’m obsessed with my first love. We’ve gotten together and broken up more times than Fleetwood Mac, and there’s more than a little Stevie-Lindsey dynamic to our relationship. Why do I keep letting him come back? How many times will I let my heart be broken by the same man?

In reverse order, I’ll let him break my heart until it’s the most beautiful mosaic this world has ever seen. Why? Because nothing in my life has been more of a microcosm of humanity. I have seen and felt more of the human spirit at war with itself in this relationship than anything else I’ve ever encountered, including my father.

Yes, he has devastated me, shattered my spirit. That’s terrible. He’s also literally saved my life, from a speeding train, by catching me when I jumped off the trestle out of its path. That was a couple of years after my daddy pulled a shotgun on him, which was after his mother forbade him to see me, which was after we both almost died from mono, which was shortly after we made love for the first time. The next time was nine or ten months later, in the backseat of my VW Beetle. He’s 6’5”.

Jean-Paul Sartre would say this most definitely is love. Plato would disagree somewhat, but not completely. Although sexuality dominates this love, that will never be all it is. There’s tenderness, there’s humor, there’s literature, there’s romance, there’s intellectual connection, and there’s an abiding depth of goodwill at this point. No, it wasn’t always there, decades in development, after the ones in direct opposition to it.

We stood each other up, said terrible things to each other. I betrayed trust, compromised character. He hated me for it, but still . . . life kept putting us in each other’s paths at important times, times of upheaval, times of great change, and in each other’s presence has always equated in each other’s arms, to the degree that it’s awkward to talk in person without touching.

When we’re fully connected, there’s no greater bliss. The world disappears. I can’t tell the difference between a truck stop and Versailles when I’m in his arms with my tongue in his mouth. I always mean to put on some music, but I never do, and it never matters. We wouldn’t hear it until after, when it would intrude on the honeyed silence.

We’ve had the othe kind of silence as well, sometimes a quiet, peaceful silence, other times a violent, screaming one, once one that carried the tomb inside it, because it was the cruelest way, a nuclear attempt to break something that cannot be broken.

The other time he saved me wasn’t from mortal danger but from something far worse—from vanishing into myself and then from being eradicated. These aren’t small things. Does one make up for the other? I have no idea. I’m simply thankful that I have the ability to forgive, that I know the value of the golden light that illuminates everything good in him. I also know how to bring out that light and let it shine.

There’s a lot of fear in the relationship. It’s always held one or the other of us back. If you’ve ever felt anything like it, you understand why. I’ve run away in the middle of the night. He’s held me at arm’s length with his voice. I’ve turned him away when he showed up with flowers. He’s left me waiting all night without even a phone call. I’ve walked out of my parents’ house at two o’clock in the morning and ridden away into the night with him. He’s taken me to Chick-fil-A before they finished building it. We’ve parked by rivers and met in parking lots. When the desire is alive in both of us, the world will burn down if we don’t have each other.

Does that sound like something to walk away from? We have a daughter who isn’t speaking to either of us, nor letting either of us see our grandson. His ex-wife has convinced our daughter that he never loved me, that I’ve always been his whore, that it’s wrong for him to give me a Mother’s Day gift. We give each other a book for Mother’s/Father’s Day. For our birthdays, we buy ourselves something we know the other would want us to have. I bought myself these earrings from him this year.

We have our own language. Especially in my latest poetry, when he reads a poem of mine and you read the same poem of mine, you’re reading two completely different poems. We have nearly forty years of coded imagery and phrases, and I’m constantly creating new code and new metaphors. It’s the only relationship I’ve ever had that allows me to do that, the only one that holds enough history and shining moments to sustain it. We’ve had more moments than years. Some have been organic, many have been created. The organic ones are the best.

On this past solstice, I burned the dress I was wearing when I met him (in my church). It was white. I painted the dress before I burned it, painted it with all of the negative aspects of our relationship: pain, grief, lies, betrayal, shame, hurt, fear, anger, abandonment—you get the picture. I brought all of my rocks, goddesses, buddhas, fairies, and crystals outside to my fire pit and arranged them around it. Then I stacked my grid (I build a grid, not a tepee) of cedar, with incense, palo santo, willow, and bundles of sage in the center for kindling. I lit the fire, and after the logs caught, I took off the dress and lay it on the fire. I’ve never seen flames climb so high, all the way to heaven, which is what it smelled like. It burned all night, and I saved the ashes from it.

Toward the end of 2024, I called him for the first time since I was back in Augusta to clear out the attic of the Vineland house. I had found a box of photos from his mother’s house among our (my husband’s and my) boxes and met him in the Publix parking lot to give it to him. In retrospect, his ex-wife probably picked a fight with him over it.

This time, I called because of our daughter. I had just received a dose of drunken abuse from her. It was excruciating, and I called him in tears. He could have passed for one of King Arthur’s knights that day. He was so loving and supportive, gave me a pep talk delineating what he considers my best qualities, praised my parenting—everything I needed, and no one else could have provided it for me.

We spoke again a few days later. Our daughter’s drinking escalated, and the drunken verbal and psychological abuse escalated. I found a rehab facility that looked incredible and moved mountains to get her there. It was successful, until some time over the summer when she started drinking again.

Our conversations became daily during the week. I updated him on where we were with insurance, detox, rehab, and travel arrangements to get her there. By the way, you can’t go to rehab pregnant.

We were completely on the up and up in our relationship until March, when he told me he was jealous of my husband. I confessed that I cried like a baby when he married his wife. We were falling in love with each other again, with all of the old feelings fully alive and a whole host of wonderful new ones mixed in.

We talked about our past. And then, I wrote a poem, the first thing I had written in years.

I emailed the first draft to him, identified as such, prefaced with, “I probably shouldn’t send this, but I couldn’t not” and asked if he wanted to see the next draft. He responded that he’d never wanted anything more.

We essentially began long-distance dating. I wrote things to him, and I began the Persephone and Hades poetry collection.

I would go down to the river to talk to him. We texted throughout the day. Our libidos rose. In April, during Masters Week, I drove to Augusta to get a bike from my sister. It was an excellent excuse to go. I saw him while I was in town. When I got to my mother’s house later, I found the thread from the sweater I had been wearing the day of our first makeout session. It was in a tin that had been on my dresser since childhood.

When I came back in May, I brought him half of the thread. He still has it. After I left from seeing him, I had lunch and went shopping with my mother and sister. Then I went back to say goodbye, and that was one of the best decisions of my life. There’s never been a more percect kiss than our last one that day. Our lips clung to each other’s like wet silk in the most heavenly embrace I’ve participated in.

I confessed that I consider him the great love of my life. He confirmed that it was mutual. We promised that if we’re ever both free again, we’ll try again. We plan to eventually go on that hike that would’ve been our first date if I hadn’t backed out. We plan to always be in each other’s corners, whether or not we’re in touch. If I leave this earth before he does, he’s the only person I would ever want to have my journals, and he’s agreed to take them if it works out that way. If at all possible, we will be there for each other in the end, significant others are to see to it that we get to say goodbye when the first of us leaves for good.

If you read my work, you know what happened next. His divorce is final, and my marriage is stronger than it’s ever been. I was completely honest from the beginning, and my husband knew when I saw him. He didn’t just know: I did something I never do; I asked his permission. It was granted. And he read that first poem first. Trust requires honesty, and my husband and I believe that if you truly love someone, you want the best for them, want them to feel as loved as possible, want their old wounds healed. My husband has no resentment towards either of us. You love your way, I’ll love mine.

I won’t see my daughter or grandson this Mother’s Day, and I won’t be reading your Mother’s Day poems and posts. I’ll be reading my new book.