My Son Is Getting Married

I have insomnia. Well maybe I don’t. You see, I fall asleep really early at night. Sometimes as early as 7:30. It’s easy to do this. I am all nestled snug in my bed, my dog against my legs. A cat or two on the bed sending off that lovely purring vibration. My husband sits across the room at his desk. His desk is his office and so his office is our bedroom. And I hear his voice on the phone or the click of his keyboard as he works at his computer and this, along with my companion pets and the comfort of my bed puts me right out. A deep sleep.
 
But not through the night.
 
Sometimes I wake up when my husband finally goes to bed. Other times not till two or three in the morning. And still other times around five AM, when I look at the clock and thank god that it’s not time to get up for good.  And during each of these varied wakeup times I do a variety of things. I check my email. And my facebook. And I play Words with Friends. Three things that involve my phone and so constitutes screen time which they say is the absolute worst thing to do as the stimulation from the screen keeps you awake/ disrupts good sleep/yadadada…
 
But I do it anyway.
 
And I also just lay there a lot. And think about things. Or sit up in bed. And think about things.
 
And the other night/morning, as I was in sitting up mode and looking out the window at the few lights that burned back at me across the orange grove, from the houses across the road far away, a really beautiful thing was occurring outside my window. The road would light up with an oncoming car in the distance what I saw only as an immediate brightness of the trees. Even from far away I could see the branches, each illuminated by the car lights coming in. And as the car sped along the road, now in my line of sight, it would eat up the light as it moved forward on it’s journey. Devour the brightness that hung in the branches of the trees along it’s path. Until the road again was dark before the next car would appear.
 
I could not tell from which direction the car was coming. The road just lit up and I had to wait to see whether the trees would then disappear from the right or from the left.
 
I liked this feeling. Of not knowing exactly where the car would appear. Of seeing the light and knowing that something was coming but not quite knowing what direction it will take.
 
And so this is with my son’s wedding.
 
The light shines so bright right now. Five days to go and so the world, their world, is illuminated. With so much love and so much excitement. And I see it. Even from across the country. I see the light coming. It has been growing for months now, in the same way that the light of the car begins to brighten the trees from a distance. A slow and steady build up of brightness that is soon so clear and white. Yet still unknown to me.
 
The fact that my son is getting married hit me fully about a week ago. I was out walking with my dog in the orange grove below my house. And thinking about the upcoming week, which is now here, and going over in my mind the way things may unfold and the things I needed to do/bring/have so that the week played out smoothly for me in that I-so-don’t-like-to-travel-but-it’s-ok-once-I-get-there-and-this-is-such-a- fantastic-reason-t- be-traveling kind of way. And all of a sudden my son getting married just dropped in. Deeply. Into my heart.
 
This is huge.
 
It is not that I have not aware of the importance of this before now. Or the loveliness of it. Or the wonder if it. I have been. In my head. But on this day that I was out walking the truth of it, that my son, my boy, was now this man that is marrying this quite extraordinary woman who is so supposed to be part of our family, the importance of this became part of me in a new way.
 
And so over this last week, leading up to this wedding week, I have been sitting in this place of awareness. And letting the truth of my son’s wedding grow inside me in this lovely way. There is wonder in this. And joy. And sadness too. But a good sadness. More an honoring of the passing of time and the change that is taking place in his life. And in my life, too.
 
I’m still not fully understanding what all this means. And much like not knowing which way the car will appear on the road, I like this, too. That there is no knowing until the moment occurs.