measure for measure

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself. -- Lloyd Alexander

there's two tools that are invaluable to me in my tool box: my level and my tape measure.

the level i like just because i like the little bubble in the water; i'm not sure i've ever used it to actually make sure a shelf was even or anything useful. the last time i looked in the toolbox, it wasn't there--gone missing, i suppose, amid moves and such.

i think i have three tape measures, though. one is small enough to fit in my purse. i like seeing how big things are, the scale of them. it's something that can be plotted and figured. i don't know why this is; i'm a fairly unorganized person.

but i do take an inordinate deal of pleasure in measuring things.

perhaps it's because so many things are immeasurable--emotions, feelings, thoughts. there is no weight, there is no yardage. even time is mutable, bent by sunlight and memory.

how much sorrow can i take? how much joy? how much laughter is enough? there is no rule, no way to take stock. can i inventory my stacks of wrongs and rights, my bins filled with shame, file upon file of happiness?

i don't know. i'm not sure there's a balance--i've lost my level. is anyone's life even keeled and safe?

this weekend my great uncle, paul, and great aunt, vernie, are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary. that is a measure of time--you can chart the course of their years together. you can see the lines on their face that resulted from discovering that they were not able to have children, from vernie going blind. at my grandmother's wake last year, paul stood sniffling, looking so much like my grandpa that i wanted to weep for another reason than knowing that grandma was gone. "i'm the last one," he said. "the last of my generation."

i can't take the measurement of that sorrow, of the loneliness. at the same time, when you see paul look at vernie, you view measureless love, shared memory that is beyond my comprehension.

this last year has been filled with things that i cannot measure, and things that i can. i can take my tape measure into the garage and measure my work in progress, the cedar chest covered in old white paint, and i can go upstairs and measure my new made curtains--6 yards of slate blue fabric.

i cannot take my tape measure and chart my emotions, or the journey on which i started last may.

part of me clings to the hope that like a map on yahoo! dot com i will be able to see in pink highlighter the path i have taken, and how long it has taken me to arrive. "you've gone 23 miles, and it took you seventy minutes."

i can tell you that three hundred and sixty five days have passed--this i can measure--but i cannot explain in any quantitive fashion the measure of what the last year has meant to me. so much has gone on.

the celtic wheel of the year turned on may first, with beltane. in ancient times, druids drove cattle between the flames of two bonfires, to bless them for the coming year.

often i feel that i have been driven between many fires. my skin is puckered and scarred, and every year i start down my path again, blessed to have what i do have, and to know what i know, and still wounded by the flame. i think of how cool the air feels, when you step out of a hot shower--and how both the heat and the cold are wonderful, in their own way.

can i measure what i have learned from this last year? have i shed skin in losing serena's friendship, in losing my naivete about trust? can i measure how much it means to me that my relationship with dan is so much cleaner, so much more honest? can i measure what it is in me that has grown, amidst the death? in the scheme of things, this was a year--filled with all the things a year is filled with: the sum of life.

i think of the sixty-five years paul and vernie have been together--how much they have withstood. all year long i have looked for a reason for what happened a year ago, have wanted there to be something definable about what has gone on since then, and what it means to me.

perhaps it is as simple as those two balefires, and the heat of them singing my skin--am i blessed, just to have stood the test? and are the scars i carry the reminder to me, of how blessed i have been?

i can't tell you, not because it's a secret, but because in the end, the knowledge--good, bad, indifferent--that i've gained over just three hundred and sixty five days is entirely without measure.