I broke down where I was, sitting at the table with my head between my hands, tears streaming freely down my face. Before I realized it, my mother was by my side, stroking my hair. She didn’t say a word, but let me cry hard into her shoulder.
Later when my sobs subsided, she pulled a wine glass from the cabinet with one hand, a full bottle of wine in the other, and sat in the chair beside me. I really love him, Mommy, I said. I called her by the name I’d used as a girl—Mommy—for suddenly, my legs had been cut out from under me, and I was no bigger than a child again. She must have felt my need, a mother’s instinct I’d wager; she wiped my face with tissue and held my hand in hers.
She spoke of her first marriage, the man she’d married before she met my father. He was a man whose name I’d known growing up, but all else had been hidden, lost and forgotten in the twenty-eight years my parents had been together and had us children. She looked at me when she said his name, and she had an expression on her face that I will never forget, a look that I’d yearned for in two long years—a look of understanding.
It’s going to hurt for a long time, she said, and it never really goes away. She told me that she’d loved a man when she was my age. They’d married young—and one year later my mother realized that it was never meant to be. I loved him very much, she said, but sometimes you have to put aside your feelings and do what is right for you and what is fair for him. They’d divorced soon after, and years later, she met my father. Her former lover went on to become a successful businessman, even forming his own company with several branches in cities across the country. Coincidentally, one branch occupied the third floor of my office building, but I never saw the man my mother loved so many years ago.
That night I read passages from Khalil Gibran, the great Lebanese-American author and artist. He wrote: “Then a woman said, ‘Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.’ And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is it not the cup that holds your wine, the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is it not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed out with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart, and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall find that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
“Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than Sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is greater.’ But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
“Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.”
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