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Comforting Words

It takes that feeling of being in a purgatory to cling hard to one's roots. Listening to Tagore's songs on death have been my way to cope with it. To understand the beauty of the words feels like a great privilege - one that J does not have. Her roots are not where mine are and maybe that is okay. It's a gift I owe her and have to find a way to give to her. We were talking the other day about her college experience is shaping up to be. 

The kids have been yanked back and forth between the cloister of home and freedom of college life several times through the course of the pandemic. For some this is proved to be a growth experience where they re-doubled their efforts to be free despite the conditions while others regressed to safer place going back to being a child. 

The group of friend J started out with pre-pandemic has morphed into smaller sub-groups based on how they have been able to cope with "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune". In a much smaller way, J is grieving the loss of what college might have been and what it has become, the lifelong bonds that could have formed and what the reality of her own experience might be. Compared to the over-sized, incomprehensible stories of loss that we are surrounded by these days, J's woes are very insignificant but they too need expression and resolution. I sent her these lines by Jane Hirshfield for comfort.

All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.
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