For those of us childless

Is it not time
to free ourselves from the beloved [child]
even as we, trembling, endure [their] loving?
As the arrow endures the bowstring’s tension
so that, released, it travels farther.
For there is nowhere to remain.

Rilke

Six year old Georgie visited me this past week.

As I witnessed the tender love exhibited between father Marcus and daughter, that part of my heart that has remained childless throughout my life opened to a soft yearning of “What if?” At 65 years of age and with a vasectomy as well, I am, what you might say, “a genetic dead end”. Moments like this do make me feel as though I have lost something un-replaceable and, touchingly, a wee sad.

However, there is a felt exchange, even if brief, between myself and the beloved child that allows my heart to capture something of the magic of family love. This suffices and allows, indeed, encourages me to continue with my solo life’s work of art, ecology and spirit.

Is my life barren? Definitely not. There is always reciprocity in shared kindness. On the following morning, while father and daughter were exploring the beach in dawn light, I stumbled out of my bedroom for a wake up coffee and came across this large exquisite vase carved by Marcus from a single piece of wood.

Such a gift. Such generosity. And the reason behind it all? “For 24 years of being my teacher, my friend”, said Marcus.

What more can I say?

Below is Georgie on a previous visit when she was three standing next to a sculpture I was preparing for an exhibition in Denmark.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Rilke