Coming Around Again

I’ve been here at our family cottage for three weeks and it might be a lifetime or a weekend . . . it’s always the same. The same people (whom I mostly really like and very often love), the same pictures, the same smells, the same food, the same scenery. I get caught up in the sameness. Swallowed whole. I love it and yearn for it and then grow tired of it. After awhile I am ready to go home and after a day or two there, I’ll yearn for this place again. It’s like anything really good: food, sex, love, perfect days, favorite places. It’s fabulous in its right-ness. And then, it passes, and life marches on.

In those perfect moments or tastes, it seems it is the end-all, be-all. And, in that moment it is. But to me, the very best part is that you can have them again. As sad as I am to see a perfect whatever go, I am fortified and lifted up by the knowledge that they come again: a beautiful afternoon down at the beach, a delicious dessert, a perfect night with my husband. Like Carly Simon’s song, “Coming Around Again”; life just keeps coming. And, it’s never all bad. And, it’s never all good. It’s all of it: the good and the bad and the middle of the road. It’s all pieces of the tapestry of our lives.

Coming Around Again
by Carly Simon

Baby sneezes
Mommy pleases
Daddy breezes in

So good on paper
So romantic
But so bewildering

I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
It's coming around again

So don't mind if I fall apart
There's more room in a broken heart

You pay the grocer
You fix the toaster
You kiss the host goodbye

Then you break a window
Burn the soufflé
Scream a lullaby

I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
It's coming around again

So don't mind if I fall apart
There's more room in a broken heart

And I believe in love
But what else can I do?
I'm so in love with you

I know nothing stays the same
But if you're willing to play the game
It will be coming around again

Baby sneezes
(I believe in love)
Mommy pleases
(I believe in love)
Daddy breezes in
(I believe in love)

I know nothing stays the same
(I believe in love)
But if you're willing to play the game
(I believe in love)
It will be coming around again
(I believe in love)

I do believe, I do believe
(I believe in love)
I believe in love
(I believe in love)
I believe in love
(I believe in love)

Coming around again, coming around again

I too believe in love. And I believe in the sanctity of life and its natural unfolding. I honor the unraveling of our days and the shape and form these days give to the months and years of our lives. We are living our lives and creating memories as we march down our own exquisite paths. We pass so many things along the way. Sometimes we stop and sit and enjoy. Other times we hurry by. If we’re lucky, we at least notice the details. And then there are the times and places and people we return to. Those “coming around again” people and places that center us and bring us back to who we are and help inform where we go to next.

I’m savoring the knowledge of the next week as my last here at Higgins this year. I’m a little weary of being away from home and chasing my little ones and I’m also really missing my husband. Time away from him reminds me of the many reasons I love him and his presence in my life. It too is one of those “coming around again” moments: glad that I can’t wait to see him and be back home in our family’s embrace very soon.

Now, as I type this, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’ll get home to Nashville and it will be way too hot and the kids will be fussy and bored and my re-entry syndrome will be serious. But, I’ll hold dearly to the knowledge that the next good thing is only moments away . . . coming around again.