Unretractable

One evening recently, feeling totally worn-out and jaded, I said to J "I can't do this much longer. Things don't seem to getting any better". Just as soon as the words were out of mouth, I regretted the pessimism and negativity in them - the two character traits that go totally against the grain of J's nature.

She said promptly "Mommy, never talk like that. Always remember there is a sun shining over your head". She made a cone with her two arms to show me how this figurative sun was shining its light on me. Later that day, I read a poem by Jane Hirshfield titled Optimism, which J would have loved if she were able to understand.

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Regrets are unretractable too - words that you say carelessly. In that instant of feeling tired and defeated, I let J see how I looked like while feeling vulnerable. It may be the moment she remembers over the many others when I came through as strong and calm. As much as I wanted to, I could not undo that mainly because it defined the truth of the moment. Yet in time, I may learn to acquire the "sinuous tenacity of a tree"