true love

She has only felt true love twice in her life. The first time was when she was invited to her dead therapist’s funeral. The second time was when her best friend bathed her. All those intimate moments with her husband, all those kisses, and hands everywhere, all those hugs from her daughters, smiles and laughs with friends, all those times her mother told her she was the second-best thing in her life (first was buying her house), all those times her father had said, I love you and I like you, and she had said it back. True love? Twice.

When she turned 50 her best friend wanted to do something special for her. As a post-partum doula, her friend’s natural talent was in caring for and nurturing new mothers. She was not a new mother, but she was a new 50-year-old, which was close enough. Her friend came over on the appointed Friday afternoon, both of them all clear of children, husbands, and other types of work. The house was quiet. First, her friend set up a yoni steam in her bedroom, draped her in scarves, and left her to focus on the power of her pussy. This part of the series of activities was underwhelming, in the same way her pussy had been underwhelming for most of her 50 years. It was there, and it worked. And sometimes it worked well. But that was basically the gist. Her pussy revolution had not started yet, that was for when she turned 51. So, on this Friday afternoon, she stood up from the yoni steam, hot and fresh, and eager to move on.

While she had been steaming, her friend had drawn a bath. She had bathed many times before in this tub, but never had it been drawn for her. As she stepped in, she noticed this difference. Like slipping under the sheets of a bed made by your mother. She was handed a small plate with a few sections of peeled tangerine, a thin slice of apple, and three green grapes. These little treats, served with such simplicity, but extravagant in their purity, were like precious jewels. Her first bite of the citrus felt like she had never tasted the fruit before in her life.

Her friend walked in with a glass pitcher filled with dried blue flowers. She silently poured hot water into the pitcher while they watched the water turn blue. Her friend slowly poured the blue water into the bath, and she sunk into a new magical water. With blue swimming all around her she wondered, When had anyone done something like this for her? Pour beauty into beauty? She let her body sink into the blue. Next, her friend returned with warm milk, which she spilled into the blue sea around her body, an island of flesh in an ocean of sublime. The milk turned the blue water rich, thick, her belly and knees made islets, her head an archipelago. She let it all engulf her.

Then, gently, softly, she was urged to sit up with her back to the side of the tub. Without words, her friend began to pour streams of warm milky water over her shoulders, back, neck and head. This was when it became almost too much to bear, this love being poured onto her. The water gliding down her body became rivers of a kind of devotion that were so full, so ancient, so selfless, she just barely hang on to herself. Tears began to flow. How could she be loved like this, so generously? Her friend wrapped her arm across her chest from behind and together, very slightly, they rocked side to side while she cried, and her friend held her, skin to skin, heart to heart.

Later, she would be placed on the bed and covered with heavy blankets, like in a sweat lodge, she basked in the ecstasy of the magic mix of tears, milk, hot water and true love. Her friend massaged her body, then laid her down on the floor into the waiting arms of open scarves, lifting and wrapping her head, then chest, belly, hips, legs, and feet into tightly bound sections. She floated, suspended in this cocoon, on the precipice of something, of being 50 years old, of getting through all those years, of allowing and surrendering to this love her friend gave so freely.

She knows what it was, what it is. She waits and expects her next true love to appear in the same way the first two did, unceremoniously, with easy intention, a surge of acceptance that flows toward you, into you, that you receive, hold, and let permeate your being. True love, like an invitation to a funeral or a blue milk bath of tears.