LAUGH LIKE A COWGIRL GOIN' THROUGH THE DOOR
Love is a very, very strange word between men and women, isn't it?..It means so many different words instead, some all packed into it, some totally left out. It's rare that it means the same words to the two who are saying "I love you." to each other, at the same time...
Like the old Joni Mitchel song says, "...used to count lovers like railroad cars, counted them on my side...lately, I don't count on nothin', I just let things ride...." Gotta say that lately, I'm just letting words like 'Love' just ride, just ride on by...wondering if I know, really, what Love means....
I'm all for lovin'. Loving is what I do, is a favorite sentence of mine: Love IS what I do. I'm not good for much else, I can tell you. Not at this point in life. I'm going to be closer to my seventies this very summer, and all the things I've done in life, I think are probably going to fit into about fifty stories. They are interesting and some are fun stories, at least to me. but hey, fifty stories and I'm done so far...and some are only vignettes! They all boil down to an intensity of feelings that I've wound up calling "love", tho they were all different feelings as can be....so, what's it all about, hmmmmm? I'm on number thirty four of those 'stories' and, so far, only a few people, some of them folks I say "love" to, have read them. They've liked them so far. I guess it's one of my ways of throwing Love around some more. While, they are so kind to read them, to be kind about these 'stories'....
I've probably 'loved' several hundred people in this life so far. most of them I would still 'love' the same way, if I saw them again...when I see them again... And, I'm not done yet. About maybe twenty of them have been 'lovers' who were men, no women lovers.... Some of these men I loved for a long time, a few for only a day or so. The feelings for them were or are, rather, very intense. Still, I meant a completely different set of words each time I said "I love you" to any of these guys, and even those sets changed over time, or even changed during any one day! There are a few who stand out in my cluttered memories about men in my life..mainly my First Love. my three Marriages. my one Widowhood. my two live-in Boyfriends. The boyfriends of my single years, before and in between marriages...well, not a "few"...I see it's more than a few men...but they all seem to become blurred into the visionary memory about the First Love...I wonder if that isn't true for most women who have loved many men...
When I first wrote this piece about Love, I wrote paragraph after paragraph about each of the "most important" men in my life. It was not long before I began to be very, very sad about what I was doing. I was selling the private hearts of these men, all of whom I left, except the one who died...one left me, which was good, actuall...to a story. They were all more than a story, much more. They were all people I hurt, a great deal, or a little, by leaving them. Their lives went on, to happier relationships or not. But, I was not the best memory of their lives. I erased all the paragraphs. I have no right to expose their dear lives.
Now, at almost the last decades of my life, I know that I do not actually understand Love between men and women very well at all. Especially, I don't know how Love starts, and why it stops, in a matter of a few or of many years. I know what each of my stories have been...my side of those stories. I have been proud of many of my decisions, but they all cost someone, me, or the other, or both. I have been humbled by the Love of some of these Men, who have been so kind to me and so vulnerable for me. I have added to the sum of who each of them were. they have added to the sum of who I am today. Some are still in my life a bit or more...others are gone....
Loving Women and Girls in my life has been so much easier, really...they have all been One with me in the ways that the Males have not been meant to be...Sisters and Mom and Friends closer than Sisters and Work-Mates and Best Friends and Casual Friends and, of course, Dear Daughters and Step-Daughters and Grandaughters and Neices and Young Women Friend/Students: All One with being WOMAN. I understand them and they understand me. That's been the way it is...not with all Women, mind you: simply: With all the Women I've loved. Still Love...they all have known and know this about me. they love me right back...
Same with Children: Easy to Love Children. Really easy for me. I have no trouble loving Children very thoroughly. Very compassionately. Very lovingly. Being with them Teaching and Guiding them. Being present with them. Enjoying them in Play and in Work. They are present with me as well. This is Easy. I have the Patience and the Good Will for this...they know this about me. they love me right back....
It's Love with the Men of my Life that continues to pre-occupy...I would like this all to be as Fine and Easy as it is for me to have Love with Women and with Children....
I have, if I am fortunate, maybe twenty more years of life, in an active sense of the idea of Loving. man with woman loving...I would want to believe that I will show compassion still. That I will take responsibility for all I do, by myself. That I will not blame. I am my own person in loving. It is mine to do, to show, to live. I would like to vow to live a loving life as honestly as I can. to have that vow be real for me.I would want One True Love that sticks around for me until the end of my life. That does not end. That cannot end...
I wrote here that all these loves blend into the ideal of First Love. In my life, it may well be that my First Love is destined to be my last. This would be my honor and my joy... Still, without all the other good and gentle and fine Men who lived out part of their lives with me, I would have never been capable of being a Good Woman with a Good Man, no, not at all. I owe them all my gratitude. I wish them all the Best of All Possible Lives...they all deserve that....
I titled this 'story'...this reminiscence, Laugh Like A Cowgirl Walkin' Through The Door...I thought this would be a light piece, a light-hearted view of love between the sexes. Sorry, darlin' reader...it's not sad, though! I think that it's only when you face the truth in your self that you can stand tall and laugh, and go on with hope and a real bravery.
I want to be that brash and brave and real lady comin' through that door to her Man, all smiles, all giving, all knowing, having been around the milky way a lot of times....That's the Woman I want to give that First Love, that Good Man, over and over again. All for him...
I vow to be That Woman in me, for him, every day and night of his loving life....
They all, all those Good Men, deserve that Cowgirl strutting through that door with that kind of joyful, laughin' Love
just for them...
all for them. all, for them....
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