Because...

                                                      Because…

Whatever compelled me to marry a man thirty-two years my junior?    I believe it to be my soul’s consciously “growing up” within the human experience that allowed that wondrous and enlightened choice to be made, however much it was contested by our shocked families.

There’s an old Sufi ritual for changing a mistaken belief.    It uses the four elements of air, earth, fire and water.    I learned it on a powerful Sufi weekend which I attended thirteen years after leaving my first marriage.  We were invited into a deep meditation to tap into our emotional bodies through visualizing a memory.    If we felt smothered by the feeling it evoked, the healing element to use was air.  If the memory elicited rage, it was fire.  If it seemed like it buried us under the weight of the world, we were to use earth or if, as was my case, the tears flowed from the sorrow of a memory, the healing element was water.  I was to choose water to eliminate the mistaken belief that arose from my incredible grief:  I had taken myself back to my father’s graveside, reliving the pain of a thirteen year old whose whole world has been taken away.  Warned by relatives that “blue bloods don’t cry” and that I must “bear up” for my mother, I was forever guilt ridden for sobbing like a baby as I watched  my Daddy’s coffin lowered into the ground.    And then came the “ah ha” moment in that meditation.    My mistaken belief was clear:  “I am not worthy of a long lasting love.”      Just as my adored father had abandoned me by dying, I had killed off many boyfriends, partners, lovers and even a husband through the death of my relationships.  I had conditioned myself to believe that to love deeply was to lose and I always “played the same tapes”, setting myself up for the loss.    Following the Sufi tradition of using the appropriate element to eliminate a habit, I began every morning to write, “I am not worthy of a long lasting love” on a piece of toilet tissue so I could flush it down the toilet…literally drowning the habit or thought pattern.    The hard part was having to do it for 30 consecutive days.  If I missed a morning, I had to start over at day one.  Forgetting the practice several times at first, I had to keep beginning all over again.  But the will to be rid of the habit was strong and after about 69 days, I made it!

A week later, Daryl came into my life.  I fell in love with his beautiful smile when he flashed a welcome as I moved into the apartment above his.  Later that night, I blissed out on the sweet dulcet sounds of his flute as they wafted through the floor boards into my heart.  Soon we were laughing and playing together like kids.  Dare was the epitome of the kind of boyfriend, partner, husband who would most certainly eventually leave me.  He was twenty-two and I was fifty-four!    An unlikely choice also because he was of East Indian heritage from Trinidad with a Hindu upbringing, he had parents younger than I.  I was a “Wasp” with kids older than he.    But the mistaken belief was gone!  No longer was I plagued with the fear of losing my man because I wasn’t good enough.  When I succumbed to his myriad of marriage proposals, 8 months later, I knew that though his incredible wisdom was always sound, it would be a day at a time.  If ever we were to split, I would be sad – very sad but never again would I feel that the evolution of a partnership to a friendship or that the loss of a loved one would mean I was not worthy of an enduring love.

We had eight wonderful years.    Creating a theatre company together, we married our talents professionally as well.  Though aging into new roles, (I’m writing my memoirs in Mexico and he’s dancing to the drum of big business in Toronto) we both still revel in convincing others of the magic of it all.  Seeing each other once or twice a year when I visit Canada, we remain family forever.  This Christmas, Daryl surprised me by dropping in from the heavens for a week.    Wonderful  music, generous gifts, lots of laughter, delectable soul food and the joy and togetherness of kindred spirits reminded me of just some of the reasons I chose to say, “Yes” to this beautiful ‘old soul’ when he asked me to be his wife.