June, 2001
[ Sweet springtime is my time is your time is our time for springtime is love time and viva sweet love. |
My first-born has discovered love, or perhaps I should say, love has discovered him.
What joy there is in seeing his half-secret smiles-for-no-reason, at knowing that he has reached a new stage of discovery and experience. How unencumbered love can seem at sixteen ! Living completely in the moment, they share glances that speak volumes, delicious shivers of pleasure at the touching of hands, urgent kisses with all the power of thunderbolts, and whispery secrets that intoxicate like sweet red wine.
Youth has the inimitable ability to believe that dreams come true as easily as they are summoned into imagination. It assumes, with the faith of an angel, that a love this earth-shattering must last forever. Deliciously terrified and inescapably pleased with the fact that happiness is only to be found in the face-form-voice-presence of the beloved, the beauty of it all is enough to make one weep with happiness. The recognition of self in the other, and the other in self, is coupled with the almost dizzying release of entrusting the most fragile hopes and dreams and secrets to each other. This first love welcomes even the bittersweet - embracing the sweet agony of temporary separations, if only to make the reunion more sweet. These things are backed by the arrogant assurance that no one else has ever felt this way, that every beat of the heart and every sigh is unique and beyond the comprehension of those other souls so unlucky not to be born to LoveLikeThis.
Like any mother I feel a twinge of pain at watching him move away from our family's little sphere of influence. Bittersweet memories of my own first love crop up, crowded with hopes that his heart won't be broken, his faith damaged, his new-found confidence won't be shaken too badly. I am relieved though, to know that the the failure of his parents to sustain a relationship didn't harm his faith - that he does believe in love, counts it among the things that he is worthy of and entitled to, and proves Disraeli right in that "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end".
K.M.G.
|
I ne'er was struck before that hour With love so sudden and so sweet, Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower And stole my heart away complete. My face turned pale as deadly pale, My legs refused to walk away, And when she looked, what could I ail? My life and all seemed turned to clay. And then my blood rushed to my face And took my eyesight quite away, The trees and bushes round the place Seemed midnight at noonday. I could not see a single thing, Words from my eyes did start - They spoke as chords do from the string, And blood burnt round my heart. Are flowers the winter's choice? Is love's bed always snow? She seemed to hear my silent voice, Not love's appeal to know. I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. My heart has left its dwelling-place And can return no more. John Clare |
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