Risk of Bliss

There is a risk we take by being in this world. Its name and nature has been clear to me for several days now. It is the risk of bliss.

It hit me a few days ago when I checked here. There is an icon on the right side of my Bookmarks toolbar for a site I visit often, though not necessarily every day. It’s a blog site, which you will know already if you clicked on the link back there. It’s called Auto-Da-Fe and is created and sustained by our inimitable second son, JE. When I checked there on February 5 I found a post called Just So. It was already two days old and featured an image of me.

If you take the time to read the post, you will perhaps know what I am talking about. It starts off with a loving tribute to his parents, Lorraine and me, and then proceeds through an account of a series of manuscripts I sent to JE as I prepared a submission for a competition that closed on the 31st. It is this account that brought tears to my eyes and a thickness to my throat, not just for the deep love it embodied, but for the grace and skill of his language and for the engaged intelligence I saw at work in it. This is the bliss you risk.

It is the risk you take when, intentionally or not, you start the process of procreation and intiate the creation of another human, a being who will grow and develop and look at you and talk to you and tell you who you are and who you aren’t and detach herself or himself from you to find her/his place in the world and then, if you are fortunate, describe it back to you. It is ultimately out of your hands, but there is in it the potential for bliss. The risk of it.

There are more risks of bliss.

Like going up to the fort with our incomparable T. and his beloved girls on Sunday afternoon and coasting down the steep hill on flying saucers and plastic sleds fast enough to skid over the bare grassy parts and landing at the bottom next to the birch trees giggling and laughing as we all flip over in the snow.

Like talking to E. last night with her serious beauty shining through the webcam and remembering my first sight of the top of her scalp with its small twist of dark hair as she struggled to emerge into our world and become the wonderful loving force she now is.

Like having A. inform me when I said I would park my boots next to the door, But Rogie, you can't park them, they're not cars.

Like being with and talking to some of the many people I have been lucky enough to have encountered in the world and cannot help but love.

Enough! Mr. Blake admonished at the end of his Proverbs of Hell, or Too much!

And perhaps it is enough, or Too much, as Blake said, but I can’t help myself. I know people, and not just members of my immediate family, who bring bliss into my life, and I must honour them, just as I honour the bliss they bring. There may be risks in it, but they are always worth it.