7eptumu7 Thinks on Love
After my talk with my pops about souls and bizoobi and joining the Rebels for Right, I’ve been thinking a lot about love. I’ve come to this conclusion: It’s the most important. Nothing beats it. At all. And everything depends on it. As in, all and everything.
When the agency decided to place us with hand-picked care-givers, they did the right thing. My pops says that his friend Geoffrey was behind that decision.
“He knows that what kids need most is love,” Pops told me. “He learned this the hard way. His own marriage lacks warmth”–That’s my pops’ euphemism for sex, romance, and emotional intimacy–“and he’s got one estranged son and one rebellious son. I think this was his way of trying to make up for those misfortunes.”
Pops has this belief that every misfortune rights itself in a blessing: Like, for example, when his own mom and dad died, he got to live with Nonny and Poppy, who gave him the kind of home that his parents couldn’t have. He says it was Nonny and Poppy who taught him how to be able to be a good dad to me.
And with the crash of our spaceship–in fact even with our whole tragic history–that all allowed me to come here. He says I’m the biggest blessing he could have ever had in his life. I know he just says it to make me feel good, but still. It’s a loving thing to say.
I think of our bizaabgotojo all the time now. I can’t get over what she sacrificed for us to be here. It makes it a little bit easier to believe my pops’ philosophy and to know that each of us is now with someone who loves us. If it is even remotely true, what my exaggerating Pops says, that I somehow make his life better, then that means that 143 other people’s lives might also be better now, too, since my pagotogo are with them.
And I can feel how much each one of the pagato is loved in return. Even if there is harshness in life, my siblings are loved.
I’m a little worried for Fi. Her song carries echoes of what we came from:
Unseen-unknown-unchild-unfound
Closeyourmouthstraightenback
Puppetsfeelnothing
I want to sing back to her, to reassure her, but I’m not sure what to sing yet. I need to think on this. But even with these memories, she is loved and loves in return: I feel this.
Love is why I haven’t given up on Wolfgang. I’m convinced that it’s stronger than his anger. I’m also convinced that it’s what he needs.
Lucas told me that he loves his big brother, but it’s hard. Wolfie’s always been a bully to him, and when you don’t even feel safe in your own house, it’s hard to have the energy to change those hard patterns.
Sometimes I try to get a feel for what’s happening inside Wolfgang’s head. I keep thinking that if there’s some mixed-up wiring, some old coding that’s not needed in a world where we don’t have to fight those giant tusked elephant-guys that used to roam these parts, like there were back when Wolfie’s ancestors were developing their characteristic traits and responses, then maybe I can find the right response to trigger him to start rewiring them.
So far, it’s not going so well.
“Get out my head, twerp!” Wolfgang yelled the other day when I was looking for insight.
Pops was watching us through the front door. Ever since Wolfgang broke my dollhouse back when I was a kid, Pops has never trusted him. He keeps an eye on him whenever he’s over.
I apologized.
“I was just thinking of wooly mammoths,” I said. “Did you realize they used to graze along the ice flows that were where the river runs now?”
I showed him a website that traced their former range in Magnolia Promenade.
“Oh, man. That’s so cool,” Wolfgang said. “I love those things. Can you imagine that guys used to hunt them with spears? Oh, man! ‘Honey! I brought supper!’ And the family eats for weeks.”
I knew I was onto something with my theory about coding. So what’s a guy supposed to do? He evolved to feed his tribe by hunting big prey, and now, he’s got this paved world with with shopping markets on every corner. You don’t have to spear anything in the produce aisle. What’s he supposed to do with all those hunter’s hormones?
That’s where love comes in. I can forgive him for being mean to me. I can almost even forgive him for being mean to his pagoto–almost. But not quite.
I don’t think I could forgive anyone, ever, for being mean to Lucas.
Darling whopped Lucas on the head last week when he dropped by.
She apologized after, and Lucas said it was OK. No big deal.
But it was a big deal to me.
Nobody beats up Lucas.
Which gets me to thinking of that other kind of love.
Pops has always steered clear of anything to do with romance, but me–I find myself thinking of it. Dreaming of it. Mostly, I am dreaming of one face, though I’m not letting myself even name that face to anyone, not even here in my journal. (Except I already have named it, but not directly in association with those three little words. OK, maybe in proximity of those three words–but not adjacent to them.)
That comes later. If at all.
Pops says not to rush love. I’m young. There’s time. But has he read Shakespeare’s early sonnets recently?
Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty’s treasure ere it be self-killed. (Sonnet VI)
I don’t want to wait. I want to taste the “distilled sweet,” to drink the vial, until I’ve had every last drop, and then to lick the vial clean.
Oh, man. I’ve got to put a name to these feelings soon before those eyes bore straight through me.
I can’t believe in this language we have just the one word for it, especially when that word has got to carry all the flavors of all the other warm feelings along with it. Even though we use the same word, it’s not the same as what I feel for Pops, that’s for sure. Oh, no. This feeling is something else entirely. It’s more like baxirrakiya. This is big-life-sun burning inside of me.
Author’s note: That haunting song we share here comes from @For_Eorzea/ Summonerd’s Fi in Chapter 10: Firewritten.
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