Sunday, February 12, 2012

Love in a Locket



Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and perhaps for that reason, the Universe saw fit to plop my mother’s locket into my lap the other day when I was looking around for a particular pair of earrings. I rarely wear it (I gave it to her when I was younger), and I got it back upon her death. Inside she kept a photo of me taken one summer day at our favorite lake when I was about five. My hair is a mess and I’m squinting, but I look so happy.
            Because of Valentine’s Day, and because that locket reappeared for no apparent reason, I got to thinking about the magical nature of love. Of course, everyone knows what love is, what it feels like, how it can weave a spell. But one of the most remarkable things about it, in my opinion, is the way it can time travel. Holding my mother’s locket brought my mother right back to me, and brought her love back to me as well, even though she’s been gone for eleven years. It’s so remarkable that to feel love you don’t have to be near a person, you don’t need to touch a person, you don’t need to see, or hear them. All you have to really do is just conjure up that person’s essence and the feeling of love washes over you. They could be miles away, or have passed onto another realm. Doesn’t matter.
          In the past, I thought love was all about being with someone (and I spent many years pining away for various guys, wishing I could be with them all the time). I realize now that that’s not true. Love is about being, not being with. Love isn’t confined by space or time; in fact, it isn’t confined at all. It can be everywhere and anywhere at once. 
             Even in a locket.

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