You can't drink from the same river twice.

A funny thing happened on the way to this post. Traditionally I do something about Mother's Day and hope and the future. This year that wasn't going to happen. This year was going to be about although TAO and I work so hard to get from Here to There, each year we end up Here.
right Here where I am a tired middle aged woman with such a sharp riff in the middle of her life that I wonder if that old shibboleth about willing your heart to stop has any practical uses.

But then I think about the disruption that would cause TAO. He'd have to come get my crap, and deal with the paperwork and finances. He'd have to get time off of work, they'd probably fire him. He wouldn't know what to do with the yarn...my yarn will is only half filled out.

And that would be grossly unfair to him. This pain isn't his pain, because all pain is individual; but he has his own pain. And in a Society that doesn't treat that pain the same way it treats a Mother's pain. If a man loses a son in war - it's an honor/duty/you should feel proud. If a woman loses the same son in war - it's a shame/awful/unimaginable.

TAO feels his pain, and he shares my pain. Shares it enough to risk the wrath of the tightfisted checkbook goddess to send expensive flowers, on the most expensive flower day of the year. Because he wants to remind me of beauty. To remind me that while today may feel as if we haven't gotten anywhere these years, it's not true. Together we've come through something horrific - through our own separate fires and the flames of combined loss/frustration/fear. We've dragged one another up from the morass and each taken turns being the strong one. Together.

Which means...in the end...this IS another post about the future.