LET YOURSELF GO

Summer just opens the door and lets you out. 

This is a quote by Deb Caletti (b. 1963), young adult author.  I like it.  But actually, it can apply to any season.  Spring certainly, the season of rebirth.  Fall, which is also new beginnings, crisp air, the school year, the end of a hodge-podge summer schedule.  Even Winter with the cleanliness of new fallen snow and the brightness of Christmas decorations.  I figure just about any time is a good time to take off, to soar.  I am thinking partly about the times when we can be who nobody thinks we are.  

When we're alone of course.  We can dance around the house, sing as loud as we want, turn the music up, clean like a dervish or let things go, cry if we need to or practice scream therapy, sleep with the covers over our head or stay up all night. . . .   But also when we're on vacation, whatever time of year.  We won't run into our high school teacher at the super market, or an old friend (or enemy) grabbing coffee.  On vacation, especially if alone, we can wear hats, red lipstick, chat with strangers, do something outrageous, create a persona.  If a friend wants to do this with us, all the better.  

It's fun to be someone different.  I rented my husband and me a place in the mountains, just for a couple of nights.  At home we are straight-laced grandparents.   On a mini-break we added spa treatments, late-night oysters, mountain views, hair-pin curves.  Oh my goodness.  Just 3 hours from home but so good to be someone else. 

You parents and grandparents, family members, care-taking children, teachers, accountants, lawyers, bosses, have you done this?  Gotten away for a night?  Gotten to be whomever you want?  Students can do this when they go away to college.  A chance to change who they were in high school.  We can do it in a new job or new city.  A do-over.  It's downright liberating.  

I don't mean a break from our values.  Or what we believe in or who we trust or who we would lay down our life for.   Just a chance to lighten the load, to let ourselves go.  To be someone else for awhile or forever.  Do you have a weekend alone or away?  Can you plan something? Why not open the door and let yourself out?  I'm looking for a time right now.  

"WHAT IF I FALL?" "OH BUT MY DARLING, WHAT IF YOU FLY?"

There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask "What if I fall?"
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?  
by Erin Hanson

Do you love this poem?  "What if I fall?"  "Oh but my darling, What if you fly?"  It's the direct address, "my darling," that sets this quote apart.  The poetic speaker shows the questioner such tenderness.  The speaker is excited for the questioner, wants magic for the questioner.  The poetic speaker wants this for us, the reader.  We are the one asking the question.  We are the fearful one being encouraged. The speaker is anticipating what we want, what we fear and what we need.  

I first thought the amazing thing about this poem was that the poet, Erin Hanson of Brisbane, Australia, was only 19 when she wrote it.  And that she has written many beautiful poems.  Poems that speak to us with simple rhyme schemes and a bit of whimsy.  Such as, 

Your blindness to my downfall,

Has gone too far to be a joke,

As I stand ablaze before you,

And you tell me you smell smoke. 

Or the line, 

If you cannot be the poet, be the poem.

Of course many writers begin young and surely the ones who last do. Anne Frank (1929-1945) was a girl when she kept her Diary. Poet and writer Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) wrote at a young age.   And some of the world's greatest poets wrote and died young.  John Keats (1795-1821), still one of the most studied British poets, died of tuberculosis at age 25.  

What is so lovely about Erin Hanson's (www.thepoeticunderground.com) poem is that it reminds us that there are people like the poetic speaker in our lives.  I hear my mother's voice in the quote, "Oh but my darling what if you fly?"  Not only that, we can be this person for someone.  The person who never ever says, "You can't do it.  Don't even try."   

We can be this person for ourselves too.  We can whisper these words, gently encourage, lead with love.  I can say to myself when I have doubts, "Oh but my darling, What if you fly?" What if our hearts soar, our spirits rise, our souls lift off?  A good thing, yes?  I want to have this friend.  But even more I want to be this friend.  Even to a stranger.  Me to you and you to me.