Love as a communal resource

My son and his wife are married three years today! On this day three years ago we were in the Connecticut woods, beside a beautiful lake, celebrating their union, and it was the most incredibly magical and love-infused day and evening. The family chat was filled with salutations for the happy couple this morning, including from little Harper, who even though we didn't yet know, was also at the wedding, a secret presence in her mommy's belly, waiting to announce herself a couple of weeks later. 

__________

The other story of the day is that my son sustained his first on-the-job injury when the handle of a sledgehammer being used by a fellow firefighter to break down a door so they could gain access to an apartment fire, slammed him in the eye. It was a small fire so he wasn't wearing a helmet, and blood poured from the wound but they didn't pause, they rushed on in and doused the flames, before immediately heading to a second fire, this one much bigger. For this one he did put on his helmet, as there was much more smoke. "Did you wipe away the blood first?" I asked him, stupidly as it happens. "No," he said. "Too much soot and dirt was already on my face, and we had a job to do." 

The firefighters put out the second fire, my son working with blood running down one side of his face under the helmet. Afterward, they took him straight to the ER where the doctor cleaned and patched the wound and pronounced him very lucky because the skin in the crease of the eyelid was cut but the handle of the hammer didn't touch his eyeball or fracture the bone of his eye socket and so the two sides of the cut could be neatly glued back together, earning him a week of medical leave in the same week as his anniversary, with possibly a second week depending on how healed he is when he's assessed again on Friday. He came by our house last night to work out in the gym with his dad. There was just the slightest black-and-blue bruise on the right eyelid under the patch of medical glue, otherwise he looks and seems fine. May he and his fellow firefighters be safe and protected always.

__________

I have choir this afternoon. I started not to go, because when I looked in the mirror first thing this morning I frightened myself. I had my hair trimmed on Monday, and yikes she cut it short, or maybe she did what she always does and my hair is just thinning. The upshot is I look scalped, tugging coils of hair this way and that to cover the spaces. I contemplated just staying inside until my hair grows in, and then I thought, maybe if I wear makeup it will distract from the hair, and then I just decided, fuck it, this is me, so now I've pulled on my clothes and am sitting here confessing my vanities/insecurities until it's time to call a car, including the fact that even though I seldom remember to put on my wedding rings when leaving the house, today I slipped them on because the thought darted through my brain that I wanted people to think there was someone in the world who had decided to love this creased and folded face, or at least, abide with it, dang, how pitiful that sounds. But I'm going to choir! It starts in half an hour so I better wrap this up and get going. 

__________

Here's something our choir director Bernadette shared last week. It was written by one of her fellow choir directors, Bobby Reuter. Though condensed a bit here, I think it captures our communal endeavor so beautifully. 

"There's more to singing in a choir than simply singing. You walk into a rehearsal space carrying the week with you: the errands, the deadlines, the headlines. You open your music, take a breath, and then, with people who moments ago may have been strangers, you begin to shape sound together. In that moment, the room changes, and so do you.

"Community is forged note by note, singing is a spiritual act, and the craft of making music with others builds skills that last far beyond the rehearsal room. Every voice matters—sopranos shimmering above, altos threading warmth through the middle, tenors lighting the core, basses laying the ground. Each section holds responsibility for its own line and for how that line supports the whole tapestry of sound. In a culture that often prizes individual achievement, choral singing invites us into mutual dependence. Rehearsals blossom into friendships, and when it's time to sing in a liturgy or a concert, the choir and wider community become co-creators in a musical and spiritual experience, breathing together, listening deeply, and connecting through sound.

"The act of singing is connection, helping us process both the turbulence of the world and the quiet complexity of our inner lives. When words alone feel thin, sung words carry, and breath becomes a communal resource."

__________

Happy anniversary, my darling children. Your love, too, is a healing, communal resource.