The Rope
I'm re-reading William Patrick Patterson's Ladies of the Rope, and it makes me...yearn.
I mean, literally yearn. For a time and a place that I've never been. For people I never knew.
I got a taste of it--just a taste. Through John. Through Clara. Through Bosia and Teresa and Diane. Through meeting them and knowing that I had found a part of my home--a part of my heart.
I ache for them.
I remember the first time I met John--how just looking at him made me go quiet and calm inside. I remember the first time I saw Clara--at least in this lifetime--and I remember her sitting at her dining room table and watching her eat my chocolate chip cookies, grinning like a child and enjoying them the way I have never seen anyone enjoy anything.
I miss how they stretched my soul. I miss the demands they made on me, while all the while accepting me as their own.
I miss the words, and the silence.
And so I'm reading about the Rope--about women the likes of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap and Kathryn Hulme and Solita Solano and Dorothy Caruso--and I think of their teacher looking at them and being reminded of mountain-climbers--"The Rope" by which they pulled themselves up the mountainside to the summit.
There is a part of me, when reading, that believes I was born too late.
And then there is a part of me, when remembering my experiences in New York, who knows that I was born at just the right time.
But I still yearn.
I mean, literally yearn. For a time and a place that I've never been. For people I never knew.
I got a taste of it--just a taste. Through John. Through Clara. Through Bosia and Teresa and Diane. Through meeting them and knowing that I had found a part of my home--a part of my heart.
I ache for them.
I remember the first time I met John--how just looking at him made me go quiet and calm inside. I remember the first time I saw Clara--at least in this lifetime--and I remember her sitting at her dining room table and watching her eat my chocolate chip cookies, grinning like a child and enjoying them the way I have never seen anyone enjoy anything.
I miss how they stretched my soul. I miss the demands they made on me, while all the while accepting me as their own.
I miss the words, and the silence.
And so I'm reading about the Rope--about women the likes of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap and Kathryn Hulme and Solita Solano and Dorothy Caruso--and I think of their teacher looking at them and being reminded of mountain-climbers--"The Rope" by which they pulled themselves up the mountainside to the summit.
There is a part of me, when reading, that believes I was born too late.
And then there is a part of me, when remembering my experiences in New York, who knows that I was born at just the right time.
But I still yearn.