An Uncommon Bond

by jeff brown

  That same night, I had a disturbing dream. I dreamed that I was a marine on a battleship in World War II. I had fallen in love with a nurse, who was tending to a bandage wrapped around one of my legs when the ship was hit by a torpedo. Everything went dark, and suddenly she was gone. I looked for her everywhere, all the while enraged at God for giving a gift and taking it back so quickly. A past life glimpse, or simply a reflection of my great fear of abandonment?

  I woke up feeling discouraged. If love is so hard to hold onto in our dreamscapes, how difficult might it be in the light of day? My faith was restored when I opened an email from Sarah. My Rocky Mountain poet was at it again, reopening my heart with her entrancing prose:

  Last night I dreamed you were with me.

  You saw my body age and I became concerned

  about ailing. Then I looked and

  your face was gentle, still, even as I

  grew older. You spoke to me, like always,

  so reassuring. There is beauty

  outside of beauty and there is hope

  within hopelessness.

  Her words quelled my fears.

  One Ring Circus

  Sarah moved to Toronto to a cosmic drum roll. When I arrived to pick her up at the airport, I remained out of sight. I brought a small bouquet of sunflowers and a portable stereo with me, which I placed against a pillar just outside the baggage claim exit. As my beloved stepped into the main lobby, I played one of our favorite love-songs. Luckily no security guards were close at hand, just enchantment wafting through the air. I hid behind the pillar, as she intuitively walked in the direction of the music. When she came close, I stepped out from behind the pillar, and we began our life together with the sweetest embrace and a chorus of kisses.

  When I picked up her bag to carry it to the car, I noticed she had chalked all over one side of it, “When two hearts beat in the same direction, they merge in Toronto.” I roared with laughter. For her, everything was a notebook. Then she noticed I was wearing a t-shirt I had made for the occasion—one with IU hand-written on the chest. And just to intensify the corniness factor (since the universe knew how much she appreciated corniness!) a beautiful East Indian boy appeared out of the blue as we were leaving the airport. Not more than seven years old, he circled around us, pointing, laughing and shouting out, “Shiva Shakti, Shiva Shakti!” Then he would circle back around and say it again with a big smile on his face. Did Providence send us a pint-sized welcoming committee?

  Our first month together was lovely. Our private language burst at the seams. On the days when I didn’t have to work, we went on one Toronto adventure after another: cycling through the Rosedale ravines, walking on Cherry Beach, doing Vinyasa at Kathryn Beet’s amazing Yogaspace studio, exploring Toronto Island, kissing madly at the top of the Cn Tower while Asian tourists surreptitiously snapped our picture. We went to Woodbine racetrack twice and won. We dressed like gangsta and chalked graffiti on alley walls. We made a lot of delicious love at God’s banquet table.

  One morning, we decided to get a kitten. Sarah needed an animal in the house to feel at home. After all, she was a country girl. Moments later, we saw an ad on a pole for free kittens. When we arrived, we spotted her instantly—a spirited cinnamon colored Persian with a furry white chest. We knew she was our cat. First lil member of the family. That afternoon, we sat in the car and pondered her name. It only took a moment—Lightnin. Dad’s name for Sarah. It had to be.

  It was quite a thing to be engaged to my beloved. I felt elated, proud, certain of our shared destiny. We made wedding plans, then kept changing them as better ideas rose forth. At first, a wedding on the peak of Whistler Mountain. Scrap that, a wedding on a beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands. No, better yet, a quiet ceremony at Toronto’s Old City Hall, just like my parents had. Oh God, no! And then my favorite, an all-weekend camping wedding in Boulder’s Foothills, the source of our first divine encounter, with all our friends and relatives dancing in the moonlight.

  Sadly, our little glimpse of heaven was soon interrupted. One night, we were lying down on the couch when Sarah quickly jumped to her feet. “Did you tell Emily about the engagement?” she pointedly asked. Emily was the last woman that I dated before Sarah.

  “I didn’t even think about it, baby,” I replied. “I haven’t spoken to her for over a year. Why does it matter?”

  “Why does it matter? Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked as she stormed up the stairs. Before she got to the top, she turned around and came flying back down with the ring in her hand. With a nasty glare she flung the ring directly at me. It landed hard on the rug near my feet. Ouch. Has my lover been momentarily possessed?

  Sarah stormed into the sunroom while I lay on the couch with the ring by my side. I felt heartbroken, utterly crushed. How could she tear off the ring so easily? Imagine if we had something real to fight about. What would she throw at me then?

  When I awoke in the morning, the ring was gone. I went upstairs and opened the door. Sarah was fast asleep, the ring on its usual finger. I crawled in beside her and she turned over to kiss me. We made soft, perfect love as the sun rose. We were getting used to this dance. Open, retreat to defenses, surrender yet again, re-open...

  Of course, the ring and ex-girlfriend were not the issue. Fear was. Fear of being left, fear of being seen, fear of being betrayed by the love that lived between us. Our ever-deepening love was excavating more and more unresolved baggage from its storage sheds. Just when I thought it was safe, a new load arrived. And each one seemed heavier and more dangerous than the one before. Would there ever be an end?

  Jealousy issues were only the tip of the painberg. Next up on the fight card were Sarah’s engulfment triggers. As it turned out, she could only stay close for so long before feeling imprisoned. Right after we melted into togetherness, she needed to create distance. And when she retreated, it would trigger my abandonment issues and I would try, feverishly, to pull her toward me. Then she would dig in her heels even more, demanding more space and distance. “You can’t pin me down, Ogdo.” Who wanted to pin her down? I only wanted to love her. Soon we were unconsciously reenacting what we lived as children, a power struggle between a young girl afraid of being trapped inside her conflictual home, and a young boy afraid of being abandoned by his mother.

  To make matters worse, I was having a difficult time living in two worlds simultaneously. It was one thing to readjust to the density of the courtroom after little trips with Sarah, quite another while living consistently together. Perhaps if the practice of law was my highest calling, there would have been no dissonance between the vibration of my working life and my love connection. But grinding it out all day in the courtroom, then being vulnerable with Sarah, felt bipolar. Take mask off, put mask on, take mask off, put…

  Sarah’s fear of engulfment soon shifted into a fear of being ignored—the test of attunement. If I didn’t pay perfect attention to her every word, she went silent. If I didn’t remember to call when I was leaving work, grenades were launched. When I forgot to bring her chocolates after work one evening, bombs fell. It was impossible to win. If I attuned too much, she felt smothered and ran. If I gave her space, she felt I was neglecting her.

  If this had been an ordinary love, I would have been out of there at the first sign of nasty. Now and then I could spot my inner runner putting on his sneakers and readying to sprint. Yet I was determined to keep my heart open. I had been brought to my knees by this mesmerizing love and it felt sacrilegious to run away. In the same way as Sarah held the space patiently when I was resistant, I was determined to do the same with her.

  It was clear we had fully entered the next phase of our love relationship. This is where the transcendent, mystical threads must integrate with the nitty-gritty of human patterning in the friction of daily life. A messy business.

  Intensifying the tensions was Sarah’s difficulty communicating what was happening for her in direct terms. Perhaps she was too lost in the triggers. Or perhaps she could
n’t discern the source of her reactivity. Whatever it was, her challenge with speaking directly from her heart was only deepening the rifts.

  But one day I came home from work and there was a letter chalked on the bathroom wall:

  Ogdo, I have never been this reactive.

  Are these reactions even mine?

  I don’t know whose heart I am protecting

  because my heart wants only to love you.

  Whose table are we sitting at?

  Whose battles are we fighting?

  Whose story are we telling?

  Indeed—whose story was this?

  Woundmates

  Sarah insisted on going back to her family home for a week to center herself and reconnect with her roots. Intellectually I knew a little space was healthy, but I was too lost in my abandonment triggers to appreciate it. I spent two hours at the airport sobbing my guts out like a baby and protesting her departure. It was all she could do to get on the plane.

  On the way back from the airport, red-eyed and snotty, I saw Dude walking down my street. Attired in his usual duster and fancy wear, he was pushing one of his carts, this one filled with sparkly purple boxes and bags. I pulled up just ahead of him and parked, then got out of the car and walked toward him.

  “How you dudin’? Shit! You look beat up,” he said.

  “Feels like it, yah.”

  He laughed in his uniquely crazy, wild way, “Love Wars, coming soon to a theater near you.”

  How did this guy know I was at war? Was I at war?

  We began to walk. It felt good to be with Dude. “You ever known great love, Dude?”

  “Now and Zen,” he replied.

  “What does that mean?” I inquired.

  He stopped dead in his tracks, as though he was recalling something profound. Then, he quietly mumbled, “If only I knew then what I don’t know now.”

  We kept walking.

  “It’s like we are riding this glorious kundalini wave, one that just builds and builds... until some old bullshit gets in the way. Do you know what I mean? Do you know about kundalini, Dude?”

  “Yup, I dated her.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Seriously, I dated a woman named Kundalini when I visited BC. I hitchhiked across the country knowing I would meet a fantastic woman at the other end. Met her on Vancouver Island when I was surfing Tofino. She was all Goddess all the time.”

  “Was it super charged sexually?”

  “Never had sex with her. Just looked into each other’s eyes a lot and went for ice cream.”

  He stopped to adjust the pushcart, and then started to walk again.

  “Where on earth do all the triggers come from, Dude? Are they just ours from this life, or another life, or could they even be other people’s stuff? Are they unresolved…”

  Before I could finish, he cut me off, “Stop thinking so much. Excessive analysis perpetuates emotional paralysis. Don’t worry about where things come from. You can’t figure out the heart with the mind. You can only understand the heart with the heart. Surrender, man, surrender.”

  I thought I had.

  “But be sure you aren’t woundmates,” Dude added.

  “Woundmates?”

  “Yah, you know, like scar-crossed lovers. Sometimes the passion comes from real love, but not always. Sometimes it’s cause two people got their wires all mixed up. It’s their wounds way of getting the best of them.”

  “That’s not us. We may be scar-crossed lovers, but our stars align.”

  We walked in silence for a few moments. I let Dude’s ideas mill around in my mind. Woundmates. Could that be us? Finally, I asked, “How can you tell the difference, Dude?”

  “That’s the great challenge, my friend. It can be real tricky. Lots of toxic connections masquerade as something special, when they are just destructive battlegrounds. When nightmares may come! Trouble with a capital T! no growth there. Run for your life.”

  His answer didn’t help.

  When we got to the front of my house, I hesitated, feeling almost guilty for taking this homeless man’s advice and then going inside. He sensed it. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t want that. I got exactly what I want.” Before I could ask, he crossed the street with his push-cart in front of him and kept walking.

  I spent the next week swinging between getting lost in my growing law practice and wanting to shoot myself. Despite my agitation, I continued to stay open, holding to the love. This is the choiceless nature of great love. Once you pass the point of no-exit, you have no other option but to see it all the way through.

  Sarah and I spoke every day while she was gone. It was tense at first, but the energy softened a little each time we connected. Visiting her family and eating Ma’s home cooking was just what the soul doctor ordered.

  An Egg and a Hard Place

  When I picked her up at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, her heart was right back on her sleeve. At the same time, something was different in the energy between us. It was like a new understanding had been birthed, as though we had accepted that we were on an extraordinary human adventure where the normal rules didn’t apply. Bonded in ecstasy and grief, we walked hand in hand through the airport like two fallen warriors who had fought epic battles and risen from the ashes. Whether we could sustain the ascension was another matter altogether.

  When we arrived back at the house that afternoon, we made exquisite love. We moved as love moved us, beyond and within breath, (he)artfully merging from one fluid form to another. Our lovemaking became a perfectly choreographed dance of sacred imagination, moving seamlessly across the cosmic dance floor, tripping the heart fantastic. It had no beginning, no end, no point of departure. Lost in timelessness, the weaver and the weave were now indistinguishable. Isn’t love the ultimate choreographer?

  In a way, we weren’t actually making love. We were love, opening to more and more of itself. We didn’t need to read about tantra, intend it, work at it. We were tantra. Not just some narrowly construed, sexualized version of it, but the breathy, hearty, rhythmic wholenest. It was clear: When you add soul to sex, it’s not sex anymore. It’s God.

  At the same time, I had to wonder: What happened to all the issues that triggered us before she went home to visit her parents? Were they worked through on some unspoken level, or would they return later with even more ferocity? Were these tests we had passed, or harbingers of greater difficulty ahead? Is the answer focusing on the issues, or is the answer to just focus on the love until the issues melt before it?

  I woke up overcome with love. It spilled over the banks of my consciousness, oxygenated my cells, perfumed my world. My beloved Sarah was overcome as well. For days, she danced with Lightnin, and chalked love poems all over the walls of the house.

  One evening, I came back from work to find this bit of lovely pinned on the coffee table:

  I woke up with you on my mind and in my heart.

  Someday I will take all your sweetness and my affections,

  Our kisses and my soft caresses,

  Then stitch them together to make a blanket

  to keep us warm forever.

  Then I made a mistake. At least, in her eyes I did. After making heavenly love one morning, I told Sarah that I wanted to have a baby with her. There was just so much love—her and I alone could not contain it. I needed somewhere to put it. I wanted us to replicate our love in flesh form. I had flashes of a true love child with her softly freckled nose and my wild black hair. Gushing with love, I began talking about the wee ones we would have, as though it was destined.

  Wrong move.

  Sarah went from raw pulsating orgasmic receptivity to hardened armor in about 1.5 seconds. I had never seen anything like it. From soul-mate to woundmate in one fell swoop. Clearly I had hit the mother- load of nerves. She didn’t talk to me all day despite my best efforts. I had no real understanding of what had happened.

  The next morning, she woke me up to tell me what had triggered her.

  “I don’t
want children, Lowen, never have,” she said with certainty.

  “But how can this love not create life, Sar? It feels so natural to want a child with you.”

  “For you. For me, what’s natural is to love you. Our love creates life with every breath. That’s perfectly enough.”

  I delved deeper: “But where does the resistance come from? Is it early life issues? Did all that family madness make you cynical about bringing children into the world?”

  She got quiet for a few minutes.

  “No, it’s just a knowing—it’s not resistance. Don’t psychologize everything. I just have always known it isn’t part of my future.”

  “And our love connection hasn’t changed that even a little?”

  She looked away for a moment before turning back and looking me straight in the eye, “No, Ogdo, it hasn’t.”

  Ouch.

  Not what I wanted to hear, but I got it. It simply wasn’t part of her path. How to argue with that?

  I argued with her all morning. Having a baby was always essential to me: the holy deal-breaker. I had such a deep certainty that this was an inevitable part of my life journey. At one point, I had actually collected items for my first child—Guatemalan sweaters, little wool hats, little toys, adorable T-shirts. I even contemplated starting a bank account for my child’s future. How could I give that up?

  When arguing got me nowhere—she was both defiant and clear—I went for a long morning walk through the freshly fallen leaves. The melancholy of autumn intensified the feelings. Caught between an egg and a hard place, I asked myself if I could replace my baby-making dream with another. At this point, it felt impossible. I expected a woman who loved me to want to create life with me. Isn’t that how it goes? My traditional sense of attachment couldn’t see through to another way of loving, one that’s satisfied with the perfection of the moment without agenda. I had no idea how to let love lead me in its own direction.