Love can handle them

I’m in my garden in the spring sun, warm in the cool air like Irish coffee.  There are bees humming in the mahonia flowers that spill their perfume in eruptions of yellow.  Some tulips are tasting the cool air like morning tea, proper and erect; others have no discretion and have peeled back their petals to reveal all.

The pear blossom is out now, white shining on dark wood, and the wild patch underneath has a carpet of yellow – primroses and cowslips, and a few that are a mix of both.  Interspersed in the yellow is the deep blue of grape hyacinths and the pale blue of forget-me-knots, the pinks and purples of a few primulas that have seeded themselves there and the violet of violets.

I am back home refreshed from my holiday – a week’s Sabbath of no work or complicated planning, just resting and reading and walking and loving – where better than Dorset?  Love needs its roots refreshed, and time together to let the other roll in in quiet waves instead of bouncing off the sea walls our busy lives erect.  Time to enjoy each other’s closeness, and to notice the little games I play that don’t best serve love.  Love requires us to know ourselves and to accept the way we are with compassion and humour.  But it also gives us the fuel to change, to bring love like a needle unpicking a knot, like a lotion smoothing out a tangle. I don’t have to be afraid of my inner demons and weaknesses, love can handle them.