Love, Laughter and Song

"Please don't let this feeling end

It's everything I am

Everything I want to be..."

Ma'am Gie belts out the first song she says she learned on guitar on the veranda of the place we were staying in. Her voice is effortlessly beautiful. Sir Billy, on the ukelele deftly strums, no truer artist at heart. Meanwhile my elder boy Garret who has autism and who loves music marches back and forth listening. Then he approaches Sir Billy and strums with him. He sits beside Ma'am Gie next. And he goes on like this for quite some time until the song ends. We talk for a while longer until Garret sits on my lap asking in his own way to rest for the night.

The first night Morgan, my younger son who also has autism and the birthday boy whose birthday was the reason we checked in at our favorite beautiful place with a seafront view, would walk around the veranda and sit on Sir Billy's lap treating him as if he were his uncle or grandpa. And then moving on to Ma'am Gie leaning against her not unlike a grandchild to a grandma or a close auntie.

I write only now a week after our two-night celebration of Morgan's birthday where things have somewhat settled and I find stillness in mind  to reflect on everything that has transpired since then.

A multitude of words come flowing from my heart when I think of the people I have met over the past year. As my world seems to become smaller, my heart seems to expand wider than I ever thought it would. And as these people who turn into friends come and as family which they have become, go, or  even as simply as I just do not get to see them as often as I want to especially if my two boys have a connection with them, even as my heart breaks, there is this wide expanse of space that is created for more love and understanding to come in. I often ask, "What is the lesson being taught here?" The answer which I find, usually many days after the beautiful meeting is that of letting go. That of this undeniable truth which is the transience of life, the relentless flow of the Universe.  Because of this I am compelled to savor every moment as it happens. As Emily Dickinson has so poignantly written,

"That it will never come again

Is what makes life so sweet.

Believing what we don’t believe

Does not exhilarate.

That if it be, it be at best

An ablative estate —

This instigates an appetite

Precisely opposite."

And with this comes another more compelling lesson--to be present in the now as it happens. And best of all to give thanks always.

Thank you Sir Billy and Ma'am Gie for those beautiful two nights you spent with us and our boys with songs, stories and laughter. Though we rarely see each other, each time we do is a moment most precious and endearing because of the love we partake in. It is more than a week after and yet I can still hear the deft strumming of the uke and the effortlessly beautiful voice singing, 

"I can see what's mine now

Finding out what's true

Since I found you

Looking through the eyes of love."

Love and light to you both.