your faith was strong but you needed proof
you saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
she tied you to a kitchen chair
she broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the hallelujah...
hallelujah (jeff buckley version)
i sing quietly here somewhere past the midnight hour, i sing under my breath, faintly, so as to avoid disturbing the peaceful sleep of three beautiful children nestled in their beds close by, but still, i sing.
a few weeks ago i sat at a table in a humble pizza joint on caroline street. my two youngest children, ages three and five, sat opposite me. we ate in silence on a warm late spring afternoon, and as we did i gazed with peace and utter acceptance at the sight of their little heads bobbing up and down as bit by bit they worked their way down into their slices.
and then evie put her slice down and looked at me and smiled.
"dad?"
"what is it evie?"
"you know what's in my heart dad?"
"what's in your heart evie?"
she crinkled her eyes, the way her mother used to, and she smiled, and she shook her head slowly from side to side and she said, "love, dad! love! and i love you!"
the sound of her words overwhelmed me, overran me, and i tried my best to maintain my composure. i smiled back at her.
"i love you, too," i replied.
and i knew then, like i've never known in the two and a half years since her mother, my wife, died, that no matter what, and whether they ever consciously realize or not, our children will always carry with them the tremendous love they were created from, and i knew then that they will grow up and bring that into the wide, wild world and make it a better place.
&&&&
somewhere past the midnight hour on a mid-may saturday night, on a dark and empty road that winds through old and shrunken mountains in upstate new york, as we drove back home at the end of an enchanted night together spent walking the streets of a beautiful old town, three months into a sometimes stumbling and confused courtship, she asked me what i wanted for my upcoming birthday.
a dear friend of mine had just invited me down to the city for a weekend: c'mon, she said. come on down. we'll do something, we'll see a ballgame or a concert or a play, we'll hit a restaurant, we'll have some fun, celebrate in style, you can sleep at our place.
i'd decided to take my friend up on her offer, and then i'd decided to ask my recent acquaintance to join me on that trip.
what do you want for your birthday?
&&&&
i've never tasted heartbreak. i've tasted grief and sorrow that few people my age have, but that's different.
love has never let me down: life let me down when it let death take the only woman i've ever loved from us at such a young age, but love did not let me down. life may have let my wife down, let me down, let my children down, but love has treated me royally; it smiled upon me and took me only to the mountaintop, and no place else.
i've lived free from the pain of betrayal at the hands of another, free from the pain of rejection, free from the unique brand of pain that only love gone bad can bring.
&&&&
my recent acquaintance, on the other hand, has had the opposite experience.
she has seen the worst of it: words and deeds of the unkindest sort that leave the reservoirs of trust and hope drained, words and deeds that i have never lived through, words and deeds that leave one more wounded, in a way, than the cruel blows i have survived.
so she resisted with all her might through the opening rounds, she absolutely refused to believe in the sincerity of my intentions, she dared me to climb the high and steep self-defensive walls she had erected around her heart, doubting that i would have the fortitude to even bother trying.
but i tried nonetheless. i tried with all my might.
for i knew that no matter what both of us may have lived through, we had from the very start connected in a manner that rarely happens in this world, and even if she just so happened to be the first person i'd tried to get there with in the aftermath, well, it's all random anyway, isn't it?
and i knew i wasn't out there looking for a practice run, i knew i wasn't out there simply out of fear of going the rest of the way alone, because before i had ever met her i had made my peace with going it alone, because i knew i had at least once in my life tasted the real thing, and if i never tasted it again, i knew that no one could ever take from me what i had once had, i knew that what i once had could never, ever be taken from me.
&&&&
what do you want for your birthday?
i want you for my lover, i thought, though i did not say so. i want you, i want you, i want you, i thought, though i did not say so.
i said, instead, that i intended to go to new york and spend a weekend in the presence of friends who loved me no matter what.
"oh, you should go!" she said. "you'll have so much fun! you should go!"
we talked for awhile about what i might do there, and she said again that i should go, and then i felt the presence of someone or something veritably shouting at me, "c'mon, don't lose your nerve now, ask her to go with you, ask her, ask her!"
and so i asked her, at the last possible second, as the conversation began to turn away from the opening, and i asked her to come with me, and to my utter surprise, she said yes.
&&&&
at some point, after she agreed to come to the city with me, i told her i had always wanted to walk the brooklyn bridge. she thought it a capital idea. a few days later she suggested we do it at night. and i thought that a capital idea. and our gracious hosts agreed.
so after we watched the mets beat the yankees, we left the ballpark and drove over to the stairs that led up to the bridge walkway, and we walked on up. my dear friend lingered behind, waiting for her man, and we walked, hand in hand, along the wooden boards rising gently toward the crest of the bridge, and somewhere near the high point, we stopped to look around.
nothing but magic in the air, and in that moment the magic swooped in and carried sorrow and tomorrow with it out into the reaches of eternity, an illusion, i know, and then she stepped up and started to climb the cables of the old bridge, magic in action, and i stood in wonder at the sight of the lit-up city and of her stood there looking out into the river, and if she had begun to flap her arms and fly away into the night, i would not have felt any surprise at all: for a moment, for a night, she had magic veritably dripping off of her.
&&&&
a few weeks have passed since that night on the bridge, and things have changed. we have exchanged our confessions: she loves me, and i love her.
at some point the time came to close our eyes and jump, and though she wanted to stand her ground and slip her hand out of mine and look at me and say, as she walked away from me, and say, i can't, i just can't, i don't have it in me, i don't have it in me to live through the worst of what i fear i might land on down there, she held on tight and jumped anyway, she jumped with me anyway.
and i know full well what's down there, yes i do, i know better than most, i know what's down there, i know that what's down there is nothing less than heaven and hell, nothing less than love and death, and i have seen all of it, and i know now that an old book had it right when it said that love is stronger than death, and i know now while hell possesses untold might, it hath no fury that can keep me from chasing the glories of heaven, for love is stronger than death hallelujah, heaven is stronger than hell hallelujah, and i know what's in evie's heart is what is in mine too, love, dad, love.
&&&&
two nights ago, as these children slept, we sat out in my little backyard, on a blanket. the moon had risen high into the the nighttime early summer sky. the moonlight flooded down upon her. her beauty in that moonlight indeed overthrew me, left me defenseless, her willingness to let go and to take me and everything i carry with me on took my breath away, and my hand reached for her face and i reached out to kiss her again, and i heard a voice crying out, with utter truth and insistence, love, dad. love.