Prayers I Didn't Send

The plant is an ivy
of some kind.

Even I
hardly a scientist
can identify it.

It grows at the side of
the dusty road in tropical
coastal rainforest Cahuita:

a hardy little plant,
a tenacious climber.

It's not climbing yet:

one rooted leaf
releases another shoot,
and the new leaf pushes up out of the dirt
in a pot on my kitchen window ledge.

It is a cutting from a plant
I gave Andy 11 years ago.
He took good care of it,
and now we stand,
and watch it grow,
his arms around me,
my body pressed into his.

Cordated leaves unfurl,
open into pretty green hearts
as alive and fresh as
the perfect children
who live with us --

two boys
gorgeous little men to be
who come to me with their boo-boos.
Not that finger,
this one!
I kiss it better;
what power I possess,
their mother.

Ha!

I drop to my knees,
give thanks.

“Romantic love pales in comparison,”
I wrote to Andy in the beginning,
“to the love of a child.”

Their love is given
pure and free and whole,
as big as their open hearts.

The forgiveness in their love
is what Christ taught.
70 times 7,
and that’s only today --

there is always another opportunity
to try it again,

always another chance
to get it right
next time.

Day by day
their faces open,
their eyes widen,
their hearts reveal

secrets of the universe
undreamed of
and hoped for.

“Maybe we just haven't found the right person yet,”
he wrote back. “I like to think one can have a significant
other that would feel the love just the same.”

“The child comes to us,” I responded.
“And it’s our job to accept him, as is.
Can romantic love do that too?”

“I never gave up hope,” he reminds me.
“I did not push and I waited
and our destiny found its way.”

Here,
in this home,
in this life
the little plant,
the young boys,
the two of us
find space to be
ourselves.

I turn around, face him:
“I love you," I say.
“You are the answer to prayers I didn't send,
you make dreams come true that I haven't dreamed yet.”

"Shh," he presses a finger to my lips.
He points to the plant.
Steadily, it grows,
another leaf, and then another,
the pulse of life recorded
in its progress.
Love in the very definition
of this emergence.

“But to be forgiven, you must first believe in sin.”
Jewel