create

that's what love does.  will i ever recover from educational experiences and will i ever be small in my own eyes (smaller than the rest of the world and universe and ____ and just the right size) and will i ever get over myself and will i ever be as content as the people i compare myself to?  and of course this is happening and somehow this is okay and it doesn't matter who or when or why or what, whatever comes will be already here and gone by the time i can love it well.  i would rather not be sane if it means i can serve ___ and enjoy my life.  learning a new way of learning and loving and enjoying.  could i live in the country and settle in and perhaps garden and make of my life a small tended plot for the nourishment of just enough?  whatever comes up, i want it to be so continuous and changeful. 

i spoke with my parents yesterday, asking about my great-grandparents.  my dad followed with character sketches of his two grandfathers.  both abusive.  one alcoholic.  with a speech impediment.  always telling stories.  350lbs of pure muscle.  logger.  a powerful ally and an untried enemy.  controlling.  deathbed confession.  great and powerful men, in several senses.  you can tell how much their memory impacted his psyche... he kept saying "that was a different time" but i reminded him how more stays the same than changes in history.  my mom wondered what it would have been like if my g-grandpa would have converted earlier in his life... what he could have done.  i wasn't really interested in that question, but i certainly hope that he would have treated his family better.  that would have changed everything.  i wish.  my grandma was the one who would challenge him.  the only one, i guess.  certainly not his wife, who was "strong" ...and co-dependent.  he gave up the drink at some point, but i know that older habits die slowly.  and history repeats itself.  or goes in cycles.  my grandpa was another man entirely.  one of the gentlest gentlemen who has ever lived, I would like to think.  and to think how much all these men have shaped our family... and women... and how to choose creating instead of maiming...