from laughing comes crying

I've had a roller coaster of a weekend... All I can think is that life is a grand and precarious thing, full of tenderness and fury, and that it is short and we should snatch at those opportunities for happiness that come our way, because tomorrow might never happen.

My cousin and dear friend got married on Saturday, to a wonderful guy I am pleased to welcome into the fold. There was so much love, between them and pouring out of everyone else in support. Truly, it was beautiful to watch and I am grateful I was in the wedding party and could experience it all up close. During the reception, she received a call that a girlfriend had just delivered her baby, another close friend of hers learned only the day before that his father-in-law had passed, and two guests, including our grandmother, ended up in the hospital after the reception. Actually, Grammy Ruth is still in the hospital, her 88 year old body under close observation. Definitely the whole cycle of life has been accounted for in the last few days. And it's strange. It's been a love fest, all of us bursting into tears, of happiness, concern, sheer exhaustion. "My heart is open," my cousin keeps saying, "and it's full." I feel similarly.

My heart is open, and the fullness varies from hour to hour, sometimes feeling more or less, but I'm starting to think perhaps all of this emotion has welled up from a profound sense of abundance, even in places I might have been looking for lack. Everything is on the surface right now, my head reeling, so much to think and feel and still so tired from all the activities, and a certain amount of drama, over recent days. I'm feeling that it is important to recognize the good in one's life, the people and the attendant moments, and to hold on to them, but not too tightly. To welcome joy in and to not be afraid of sorrow or a sense of being overwhelmed, but to walk forward into it, head on and to experience what it can offer. I feel a strange sense of calm, despite the click and whir of my wheels spinning.

However, what I feel most pressing at this moment is to become horizontal for a time, before I sit and reflect on the amazing Damien Rice show I saw tonight from the side of the stage at the Paul Masson Mountain Winery in Saratoga, before I write any more, and certainly, before I go back to the hospital in the morning, so... I've seen a lot of tears of late and cried a good number of them myself and therefore I will leave you with the words of Max Ehrmann: "with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world." Life is short, but love is in abundance. Go forth and offer it.