IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

         IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

"Our lives are made in these small hours.
These little wonders. These twists and turns of fate.
Time falls away, but these small hours
These small hours, still remain"
        -  Rob Thomas "Little Wonders"


I was talking with someone the other day about how it is that other people see me;  How it is that I have come to define the world around me in the way that I do  differently from the way other people are accustomed to seeing it.  Without even thinking about it, I answered that it is 'the little things' that make up the whole that has me coming to a completely different understanding.  My Grandmother once sewed a small hat for me when I was only two years old with small red embroidered letters that said "The Littlest Beachcomber". I am very proud of that hat, and of the people who predicted in me such a profound truth.  Even at two, it was apparent that when I walk down what every other person saw and thought of as as merely a beach, that I would come back with handfuls of the things that others had simply walked over as so much sand.

     To a person not looking, driftwood is merely a part of the beach.  It litters the surf line as so much flotsam and becomes nothing more than brief interruptions of a supposedly perfect line of sand.  But when I find the one piece of driftwood that looks like a bird or a seal, there is rarely a time when the person I show it to does not immediately see what I have found inside of that particular piece of wood.  The difference is that now this piece of driftwood that was just recently nothing more than one of many, has become unique.  Among all of the other pieces, this one was singled out as not only different, but valuable.  Maybe not valuable to everyone, but valuable for what I saw in it.  And that brings me to another conclusion that most people overlook about the way I see the world.  In order for me to have seen the shape of a bird or a seal in one piece of driftwood, I looked at every single piece of driftwood individually. In order for me to find that one perfect seashell among the clutter of broken shells, I had to crawl along on my knees and slowly cull away from the others a perfect symmetry from what is usually walked over the top of and dismissed as nothing more than an abundance of  imperfect clutter.  Perfection is found in the usual and normal, but without spending the time to contemplate it, it will never be found.  Even when it is right under the very noses of those who expect it.

     The conversation wasn't entirely about me, however.  It was more about you, and what it was within myself that draws me inexorably toward you.  Why is it that a person like myself, with such an overwhelming drive to find that which is so often overlooked, would find such definition and meaning in myself by loving a woman like I have come to  love you.  The answer was the same, though. It is because I do not see you as a simple beach or a pile of driftwood.  I find in you  'the little things'.  More importantly, though, at least to myself, I have come to find a person who appreciated the little things in me.  That one person who got in a bit deeper than anyone else and found those pieces of myself that others felt no need to see a difference in. To me, and to you, everything is different.  Sure it's just driftwood and seashells to everyone else, but they did one thing just like everyone else has.  They trod over the top assuming a  normality, where you came back with a handful of needful things.

     So how does it happen?  How does a person draw from the same experience under the usual circumstances, a completely different understanding and knowledge?  The trick, I think, is that our lives, and the world around us and the people we come to love as deeply as we do, are no different than a beach.  It is what you care to look for an understand as more meaningful, that defines a person or a love, in a way that simply can not be explained to another person without the same set of skills to perceive it in the first place.  Most people view the beach on the whole as valuable and worth it.  It is simply the use of the beach without ever realizing that the beach is made of of millions and millions of different things.  Depending on what we decide to hold as valuable, and how willing we are to understand the uniqueness of particular things, can make what is held in our hands become far more priceless because we have come to find it.

     If I were to think of the most critical material possessions I have of the person I love, they would take up no more than the palm of my hand.  Thats it.  And to be quite honest, that is all I have ever needed to define withing me the very quality that makes loving her more than anything I have ever known. Sure, it only fills the palm of a hand to a person who values the beach, but in the palm of my hand I have the weight of the world.  It is the little things that move me to the point of understanding within myself.  That does not make me poor or simple.  That makes me know that the woman I love is defined by a power higher than the weight of a beach, and it is not their standards to which I weigh the worth of the things I hold important.  That is why what I see and find of her is in places people do not understand, and how certain places and feelings have become more meaningful to me because of a single thing than could be defined by an entire room full of material things.

     When I walk with her, I do not care where we are or what we are doing.  I care that her hand touches mine or that I know the curl of her fingers against the palm of my hand.  I don't care what she decides to wear on that day except for the fact that she feels happy within it if she does like it, or knows that she is beautiful even when she does not like it.  She defines what she wears, but does not get defined by the wearing of it.  When I see her walk from one place to another, I do not see her as simply moving in a direction. I see the way she moves her body so differently than other people.  The same, but in a way that is so unique as to make her so much more than anyone else.

     I do not look at her face and simply say it is beautiful.  It is a collection of facial expressions that I can read like a book.  How her genuine smile has a way of making her look almost shy, and that the knowing of it within her causes it to make her eyes smaller with an even larger grin.  That her eyes are always the same size and shape, but can show wonder and passion and anger and compassion simply by the shape of her eyebrow.  It is the most wonderful face I have ever seen, but it is again a collection of parts that are appreciated and felt by how they work together as completely unique.  To see her as pretty is to simply walk on the beach and explain the obvious. Anyone can do that.  To see her think or feel, and to have it reflected onto her face, is to truly know what it means to be beautiful.  And maybe that is why it is so important to me to ensure that what she feels is reflected from how she looks.  True joy and happiness is seen on her as easily as another sees her nose.  But without knowing what she felt to make that face, is to waste half of the beautiful person that she is.

     I do not understand how it is that a person is defined by where they are seen as much as what it means to notice a person within that spot.  How some of the most romantic and thoughtful places I have been with her have been completely defined and remembered by something so simple as they way she sat to have one thigh crossed over the other, or how her fingertips ran over the rim of a glass.  To me it was so much more than the simple mechanics of muscle and bone.  It was a direct reflection of what it was inside of her that causes those movements.  Even unconsciously, I can see and feel what she thinks.  I know when she is not saying everything she feels or when she suddenly comes to an epiphany within her.  I can hear the tone of her voice and gauge where to take a conversation to either compliment it, or avoid it.  Most of all, I can tell the difference between her need for simple affection and happiness and a deeper compassion and need for comfort.  Yes, passion and desire are there too, but how she feels is transmitted to how she moves and with how quickly she does it.  The difference between simple want and desire, and a deeper need reflected by how deliberately she expresses what she touches becomes.  Know this woman, and you can actually feel her fingers sifting through broken shells to find one symmetrical perfection for the moment.

     She flows into and comes out of some of the most mundane and trivial things.  How something that at one point was nothing more than a chair or a hammock becomes a place where so much deeper meaning resides now.  A stone turned into an icon, a word into a mantra, a simple piece of clothing into an anchor that holds you tight to the ground.  All of them, from something as plain as a canoe becomes the vehicle of choice to a world beyond measure and the smell of cinamon and apples.

     Perhaps the greatest treasures I have come to know are not in what I find, but in how quickly I can come to find and know them.  Time, for as much as it frustrates me to endure when she is not around, is nothing compared to how much I can gain from small moments.  They do not require the span of weeks or months to be understood.  They require seconds, and sometimes, not even that.  Time seems to be an idea that everyone expects us to value equally.  The old adage that time is counted in moments is not necessarily true for me.  Moments, to me, are what count time.  Ask me if it has ever been enough time before I make another decision, and I will tell you that you obviously do not understand what it is that I have made of the time I have.  Because when I think of how time passes with her, I will say that it was all moving much too fast, but when I ask myself what it is that I felt within it, I will tell you that I have gained lifetimes from it.  It was once asked of me whether I have waited long enough or not.  I answered inside of myself, that I will give as much time to waiting as I have from the time I have spent feeling the warmth of it.  And for that, I will stay warm for years.  Time is another one of those pieces of driftwood that is overlooked by most.  They may be a collection of moments to others, but I feel time with a greater understanding of its worth that makes paitience seem a small price to pay for what it is that I gain in mere hours.

     If I were to view my world as a simple beach, but illuminate the parts that she now defines as unique, there would be very little left of the beach that would remain in darkness.  Because it isnt a question of what you see on the beach that defines the weight of it, or of her.  It is how you see the beach as a collection of unique parts.  Each one seen and valued for a different thing and for a different reason.  Walk across the meaning of her as a beach, and you would know what it is to walk on stars.  See what it is within my mind as a beach, and her presense would blind you.

     She is not defined by where she is, she is defined by what she is.  She is not seen so much as she is felt, and she isn't known as much as she is understood.  Find those things, and you will truly understand what it means to be a person like me.  Know that, and you will understand why a person like me loves a woman like her the way that I do.  People ask me to stop paying attention to that small handful of things I hold to myself, but they never stop to realize that that pile rests in my hands as the most valuable and worth far more than anything else.  Even if they were to throw it to the ground as useless, I can always go back and find more of her in anything I look at.  Ask me why I can not define everything she is to me for all the things she is worth, and I will give you the most profound and equally comical answer you have ever heard. 
 
 "Because I can't carry a beach."

     How you respond to my answer will tell me whether you are the type of person who understands who she is to me, or you will show me that you choose the beach for how you see it, rather than what the beach really is.

     Yes, she is a collection of little things.  Small and trivial and commonplace to everyone who can not see her as I do.  It does not frustrate me that others can not see it in the way that I do.  If anything, it exemplifies her as something others simply can not grasp.  If you want to know the weight of this woman to me, and see her as a beach, then you need to dig.  Dig deeper, and see her for what she is on your knees, not standing and walking above it.  True, to you she may be nothing more than a handful of small bits from a bigger beach, but I am "The Littlest Beachcomber" and I was born to find the bigger things that can only be held in smaller hands.