Frayed Feisty Threads - Book IV

Virtuous Truths 1/03/1998

"...take my hand and lift me higher.

Be my love and my desire...

Take my heart to higher ground".

Intoning a plea of passion from the heart, Barbra’s rich tones fill the song with warm feeling. Listening and musing again iver your unexpected reappearance in my life, I find the words have an uncanny familiarity. Am I so blinded by passion that I cannot see? Has my heart turned form higher truths? Having wrestled with this over and over in my mind, I find I come to no conclusion. I cannot decide. Willing my memories of you to leave and my feelings to stay in check, I try to focus on the book in my hands, “A Virtuous Woman”…what an interesting gift from my daughter!

It's a title I know I cannot claim. I am suddenly wondering if the basis of our relationship was based on your ability to lift me to higher ground. Perhaps only a virtuous woman can really see the truth in love. The rest of us are left stumbling about blindly on love's path and hoping our choices are right.

"I have walked too long in darkness

I have walked too long alone...

I would trade the world of ages

For a warmer hand to hold".

Setting the book down, I find myself dreaming again. I wish that I had never mentioned the trip to Niagara. For it was a light-hearted comment, with no expectation that you would be remotely interested. At least, that's what my virtuous self would like to believe. Yet I have driven us there and back a million times already. Your voice, your laugh, opens a floodgate of memories and feelings. It is not difficult to picture myself in your arms again, exchanging virtue for your love. And knowing I have been too long alone, I want you to take my heart to higher ground...one more time.

"Hold me safe and unabound..."

There is no way to explain or justify the two lives that I lead...the innermost "real" me and the outer masked version. Finding the real me is a challenge for any man, but I have revealed more of my soul to you than to anyone in my life. I trusted you beyond what I ever thought I was capable of doing. I believe and have always believed that we have a chance at something...or is it my blinded longing for a rooted presence in my life that fuels this belief? Believing you to be out of my life is easier on my heart than the teasingly remote possibility that you might be in my life....the virtuous mask feels safer.

"In this world we move through shadows
Never sure of what we see..."

Perhaps when one spends one's life trying to atone for indiscretions in one's youth, the truth about love and relationship remains elusive. I know that in my heart of hearts, there may be a chance to be a person again. Not the automated, well-practiced professional that I have presented to the world, but a real person, with all my flaws and all my love, both of which remain hidden in the deep recesses of my heart.

"Come and share the truth with me."

There lies deep within my soul a wellspring of hope for a song of power and brightness and truth to illuminate the path to my heart and replace the emptiness inside. A song enduring the teat of time, lasting through all of life's passages. There will always remain the wish for you to share the song with me.

01/03/1998
tuc