In life, you have two choices: you get softer, or harder. Softness is a cat lying on its back, the belly exposed. An animal who used to be wild forgets they can be a predator, or prey, forgets they can wound, or be wounded, and displays an unmitigated trust.
My dad, for example, has softened up with age. I think he always wanted a clean independence, and once he had it, once his life was entirely his and he could spend his days reading and walking in the woods, he relaxed, and all the softness that was inside of him came into the surface and became a gift for my sister and I, his two daughters. It wasn’t a dramatic change, because the softness was always there; it was only a small deepening, but noticeable.
The biggest test for softness is love. You can’t be like a cat exposing their belly until you let your heart be held inside someone else’s fist. I talk and move softly, but maybe haven’t been truly soft like that. I always kept a small distance, even as I got close to another human being, even as I married him and loved him for over a decade. I chose him, maybe, because he already had a distance in him, and it protected us both against being truly soft. We were soft but just to a certain degree, a part of us still vigilant, holding on to bits of our heart without giving them away completely. We gave each other our hearts, without abandonment. And yet, the part of my heart that was given away will always be his, which is to say more accurately a part of my stomach will always be his: the part that aches and worries and fills with acid and anxiety and fills with butterflies and warms with tenderness, a part of the softest part, will always belong to him.
Now, as my heart and my life open again into a wide, unknown space, I just want to be soft, truly brave, at least once. I want to fall into the abyss of a love that can nearly kill me. Because what is the point of living and what is the point of loving if you don’t ever get to tremble in front of a magnificent, bone-breaking storm, and let yourself be drenched, and forget, for a while, that you can wound, or be wounded.
I’ve said this before, to myself, many times. I’ve made speeches and silent proclamations resolving to be brave. Then I went into my life and held a distance or chose a man who held a distance so we could both be together, but on guard. So we’ll see.
Here’s the illustration of a small, wild, soft creature. A marten.
