Milk and Sun

Today I received a photograph from a friend that lives quite literally in the other side of the world. She not only lives upside down, but also in the wrong season and about half a day in the future. It was the picture of this woman, whom I’ve learned to love without having ever breath the same air, and her small daughter. Both of them are beautiful like the sea and like the mountains. Vast, deep, serene. One of them is fiery, brave, sexual, brilliant, the other one is pure, wise, firm, warming.

I watched tenderly those two smiley faces looking back at me, first with curiosity and joy, but very soon I was touched and in awe about this two women walking preciously under the sun. And I could only imagine their story, the years of dreams and tribulations, of calm days full of kangaroos and koalas, and the stormy days full of thunder and confusion. Two whole lives compressed in an image, a regular image taken in a birthday dinner.

And then I think about this other woman that I know who has the hands of a mother used to bathing children. An extraordinary force of nature that is at the same time warm milk and boiling magma. This warrior lioness with two cubs that is struggling with all her might to feed them, to make art and to be happy, and still has the delicacy of letting me into her heart to wander effortlessly.

Lonely women. Powerful lonely women. Or maybe not. Maybe they have their children to fill their every minute. Or maybe they are big enough to accompany themselves. Maybe their own grandiosity is enough to keep them. I truly don’t know. I can only imagine. But what I DO know is that I feel blessed and honored to know them, to admire them in their feminine might. What I know is that I, myself, feel much less lonely in this world because they exist. I feel less lonely as this man who is privileged to love them. I feel less lonely because there are mothers taking care of the children of this earth. Milk and sun.

Maybe because I am an orphan.