A Dedication

As I said in a poem I wrote for my wife, she “has turned my world rightside up.”

Before I met her, my world – my true, heart-of-hearts world – was ass-backwards and upside down. To a large degree, that state of affairs flowed from my own mistakes, both of commission and omission.

But I made a brilliant move when I married Susan, a move that has made me feel as if I’ve found myself, a move that has made me wonder: Where exactly did I wander off to? How in the world did I get there? And how did she pull me back to what I truly am?

I found myself through the two-wayness of our love. Neither of us has “lost” ourselves as we give ourselves to the other. On the contrary, we both give and receive as individual human beings. And here’s what’s amazing: The border between our giving and receiving has melted away into a confluence of loving.

Susan’s love is an anchor for me in a world full of forces that buffet and blast. No matter what I experience elsewhere in my life, there is always Susan. Simply seeing her, talking to her and touching her ameliorates the bad and accentuates the good. She is joy in the flesh.

I keep asking myself: What did I do to deserve her? She would say, just by being myself – the self, I might add, that was liberated by her.

So to Susan I dedicate this humble clutch of thoughts as one way I’m trying to be fully, vividly alive.