Not a Hair of Our Head

At lunch, my oldest -- just three -- was talking again about my father. When I said something about missing him, she asked, "Does he miss me?" "Of course he does," I told her, knowing how thoroughly he would have loved her (and his other three grandchildren).

"I miss him too," she said. "Because he was my grandpa." Then she spread her arms wide, looked out the window, and said, "but he is all, all, all around."

W.S. Merwin has a poem I adore called "The Initiate." It's surreal and hard to translate into tidy sense, but the imagery names something that I associate with eternity.

He starts with the image of a "juggler" who "is led out under the stars" where "tears begin to roll down his cheeks." A few lines later "he sees the stars swimming up / in his tears," and then:

later when the morning star
is dry

he is singing Not a hair
of our head do we need to take with us
into the day

not even a hand do we need
to take with us
not even an eye
do we need to take with us
into the light"

My children will never meet my father, and still he is teaching them to see precisely what we do need to take with us into the day -- and then later, into the light.