Pas de Deux

The world of symbolism and the spiritual, the world of the heart and emotions, is full of the deep, moving groupings of life’s experiences that come in twos and in threes. Just when you think you cannot take any more:  wham wham. Wham wham wham.  Then there are the small miracles that happen, also in twos and threes: wham wham. Wham wham wham of beauty. Understanding. Empathy. Grace. Joy and joy. Love love love.  What goes with that is what my new friend taught me, something my heart has known instinctively and that I now realize others do in a primal way, so primal there is no knowledge of where it comes from:  In the twos and threes of grief and loss, there comes from the deepest part of your gut the mantra helpme helpme helpme, a knee-jerk prayer, beseeched to the gods of whoever is out there. And when one is blessed with random joys and a type of  salvation of the small moments of good: then there is thankyou thankyou thankyou. In a few hours in one day this week, I had need of both.

When I looked back on that day and saw what happened, I realized I have always loved twos and threes.  Twos: partnership, lovers, one on one friends, writing mind to mind, heart to heart, over email to a friend. Mother and child. Body to body hug to hug. A kiss on each cheek. Hand holding hand. A tête a tête over a glass of wine or pot of tea. Two goldfinch, male and female, light yellow and dark yellow, playing on a dried echinacea head in late summer. A cello and cellist. Random visions on the streets, sidewalks, trains, the tiniest moments between strangers or a friend, when there are shared smiles, wonderment–between just the two of you. There is the pas de deux at the ballet. Or, the vision of someone in your life, even when there is no one special–that dance of the phantom, perfect companion, the soul mate you’ve been wondering about for your entire life. There are the gods of the universe and you, the private, invisible dance between you and a beautiful wind, sun on your face, feel of the earth while you’re gardening.

Trios have always moved me, too–the  Three Graces, the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family, and I’ve always loved the sound of the tris on the tongue, and their meanings…triumvirate, trifurcate, trillium. All of them are so beautiful and evocative, but none more than the original trio, the most precious of trinities, that of the family: a couple and their baby. That trinity is one I once had and cherished, and lost forever. And so when I am faced with images or moments or things that symbolize duos and trinities, and if these moments are pulsating with emotion, with life (which others may think ordinary and unremarkable), these moments then take the breath from me, make time stop, and make passing through them to the next moment impossible. “The only way out is through,” Robert Frost wrote.  I want to say to him:  Not always.

On Friday, the first of the three graces was being in the rain. After a few days of fighting bitterness, sadness, exhaustion and heat (the unending heat wave exaggerating the normal challenges one can face), I was leaving work with a friend, and suddenly the heavens opened, the clouds burst in a torrential downpour of cooling rain. We were drenched immediately, the wind and cool rain in our faces, my umbrella broke. I was delighted, and so was my friend. Everything suddenly seemed and felt better, from within and without. We laughed and smiled at each other as I ducked down the A train steps to take a long walk under the city through the underground passage with arched ceilings.

The crowds were immense, the passage just packed with people. Yet I didn’t feel angry or frustrated, because the cool and wet from the rain made me feel free in the foggy humidity underground. As I walked, I began to hear the most mournful,  beautiful sound of a violin. I thought, what was that? I began to hum. I wanted to know who could be playing the violin in this place, the most crowded and noisy subway corridor of all of NYC, playing something so beautiful, and so clear.  So I raised my head to look, and to let my ears capture the sound as I walked. The music was so beautiful. All heaviness from the week and from my thoughts were lifted from me, and I felt strangely out of body, that there was no subway, no people…they were just shades walking next to me. I felt so calm, with a strange sense that I was maybe the only one who was really hearing this music. I began to come closer to the musician playing the piece, which I felt had to be Tchaikovsky; it was so slow and sad and melodic. The violinist took shape, and within the thousands of people streaming by, the moment stood still. I kept walking but everything stopped, because then he locked eyes with me, his huge, deep, piercing brown eyes, putting so much into the long, slow, arching, bittersweet melody, and he kept his eyes on me, his mouth so serious and still, and his body bending into the weight of the music. He never took his eyes off mine; he followed me all the way to the turnstile.

I looked behind me one last time before pushing through the turnstile and turning away my gaze…for my entire slow walk down the hall to him, he had seen in my face that I was riveted, that I had been made to stand still by him and his music, even as I walked. It hit me later when I got on the subway: this piece was indeed Tchaikovsky. It was the Nutcracker Pas de Deux. As he played and I walked, I was in a slow, surreal dance with a total stranger. For the seconds that he found this one willing partner, he captured that moment by staring into my eyes as he accompanied two randomly paired dancers, him, and me.

Later that day, at the end of the afternoon, the duo of graces became a trio, adding a moment that then felt like anguish, creating the need for the helpme helpme helpme prayer while simultaneously creating the urge for the thankyou thankyou thankyou prayer because of its beauty within the grief.  I was saying goodbye to my little girl after seeing my former house for the last time–I found out that afternoon it was being sold, and she will be moving. I hugged her goodbye on the back path of the garden, on a property that she loves that she must soon leave, that I cherished for over a decade, and will never see again. She kissed me with her sweet, perfect lips, but she said nothing. My little girl turned around, tall and graceful like a blond fairy spirit, and floated the other way down the sea-pebble path, leading to the hummingbird and monarch and bumblebee garden I planted for her the summer she was born and that was always so full of those divine little creatures, and to the herb garden of oregano, mint, tarragon, parsley, the herb garden where, amazingly, my water broke 10 years ago this month and she began to be born. The last image I have of her as I stood there in our final dance was of her beautiful back in her summer playsuit, her stunning and sweet shoulder blades and neck and long graceful bare arms and suddenly long, long legs…her body and spirit taking her where it may, into the cherished garden where the huge waterfall fell from me and began her birth.

There in the garden was the final movement, the final, graceful, poignant leap. For in that moment, in that place where we shared almost her entire life, she floated away from me. She just turned her back and floated away, slowly, like a languorous butterfly, the big monarchs that slowly drift without seeming focus or plan from flower to air to flower. The goodbye was too painful for her; she turned her back on it, on the goodbye, leaving me to witness, to memorize the way her back looked, the way her hair in the sunlight looked, to memorize and feel the goodbye as if it was a physical form, a physical space between us, shared between us, created just for us. I think there will never be a pas de deux like this in any ballet choreographed or expressed by any dancers on any stage in any theater, nor ever again experienced by me in the random comings and goings of life, for the rest of my time on this earth. This was the final one with my child, at that setting, at that moment, with the sun going down, the fireflies tinkling their tiny lights, the cicadas singing (weaker and weaker by the hour); the last time I will be with her in the garden where she began to be born.