by tashmcgill | Nov 20, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind, Relationships
I’m sitting in a kitchen in Tennessee, looking out the window. I have arrived too late to see the turning of the leaves but as the cold November wind blows through the trees in the yard, I see them fall, fluttering yellow gold and bronze.
I’m reminded of a song, an old jazz standard, ‘Autumn Leaves’. It was a favourite of mine for a long time. I hum it now gently to myself and remember listening to Nat King Cole with a glass of red wine in front of the fireplace. I’m smiling now, into my coffee cup. It’s a romantic kind of feeling, being in a place you love with people you love and who love on you. I’m already anticipating the coming knock at the door. A treasured one is travelling from Atlanta to get here and my pulse races knowing the next few days will be full of love and laughter. We’ll be good to each other, these loved ones and I.
I am romancing myself. Lingering, filling up my senses with moments that are good for my soul. Romance is good for us, it gives you stories worth telling. This is really the heart of my annual Thanksgiving sabbatical, a chance to immerse myself in the feeling of being alive.
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by tashmcgill | Nov 19, 2014 | Culture & Ideas, Relationships
I am boarding a short flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Soon, I’ll take an overnight flight they call the red-eye to my final destination. I’m drowsy and looking forward to a few hours of peace in my own mind during this stretch of travel.
The young Australian couple seating themselves behind me have other ideas. His nasal twang is behind my right ear within minutes of beginning to taxi. I can see him twisting in his seat, moving his shoulder away from his partner but pushing his face into hers. He spat out the words.
‘Get off me! We’re going to be next to each other for 15 bloody hours, the least you can do is give me this one flight without cuddling me to death.’
My mood breaks with a crack. My head hits the back of the seat and I can’t help but tilt my ear towards the rest of the conversation. Human observation is my skill and trade, inescapable even in a steel tube hurtling down a runway.
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by tashmcgill | Dec 11, 2007 | Love & Marriage, Relationships
A few years ago, I let love grow deeply within my heart. It didn’t grow into anything fruitful, at least not on the outside. But I learned a lot about how to love someone wholly and completely.
It’s so easy to craft an image of love that is somehow shallow and momentarily fulfilling, pinning that to an ideal of romantic soulmates. As if somehow solving the mystery, finding your way through the maze to the goal of love fulfills purpose. In doing so, it can be so easy then to look around your present circumstances and feel less than.
However, when I think about the belly-shaking, heart-warming feeling that you’re supposed to get at the end of romantic movies… I get that all the time. In fact, I get that feeling every second day or so just opening my email inbox and seeing the names there.. people from all over the world that know me and dare I say.. like me and love me even a little bit.
After all – whether I am partnered by a lover, or by a team, or by my dearest friends… the expression of love may vary, but deep true Love in my life is present, and what I have of Love right now is more than enough. To be known in words, deeds, mannerisms. People who know what I’m thinking – I have all those things. People who stand beside me and love me, correct me and cheerlead. There are even people who believe in me more than I believe in myself… so what more is there? Anything more than this would be an abundance.. and a good good blessing, but not necessary. The Love I have right now is big and gutsy and resounding. I feel it in my belly all the way to my toes. I speak out the names of Love in my life and feel stronger and stronger.
Perhaps, it is the fear that I will be ok and that perhaps all the waiting is better spend in living. Because the Love I have is so much more than I could imagine or dream of. Perhaps it is the fear that in letting go of our peer expectations, our definitions of fulfilment, our idea of satisfaction.. we will be irrevocably changed. Is it enough to be satisfied, to love well and be well loved? To find expressions of physical intimacy that are appropriate and safe, that are engaged in the best of humanity. To recognise the fullness of life in the oneness of human life. To suggest that the key to Genesis is the ‘helpmeet’, the partnership..
In fact to go one step further and suggest that we are called to partner with each other in many varied and unique ways.. and these connections of love, expression and strength are in fact, the deepness and beauty of being in Love.
The love that I share, and am blessed with is still deep, abiding, gutsy love.
Not all women want to be maidens pursued. But then there are times when you do. Sometimes I want to be rescued, and sometimes I just want to be cheered on from the sidelines. Sometimes I really want other people to take charge, and sometimes no one needs to be in charge. The image I like most is discovering Love where it has already been waiting to be seen. The revelation of where Love is already abiding. I have a friend who I’ve known for years that I’m only just uncovering a deep Love for, a shared partnership and commonality. Still… I’m just a girl, and I’m prone to change my mind.
