It has been almost ten years since TJ and I got married. In fact, it will be ten years in March.
I remembered today a poem that we had printed on some of our wedding documents. It’s by WB Yeats.
“Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
I hadn’t thought about this poem in many years which makes me a bit sad because it meant so much to us during that time.
When we got married, we were poor. TJ had just started nursing school, and I was finishing up my graduate degree. We had one car between the two of us and that was held together with coat hangers and duct tape. (Literally no exaggeration there.)
But TJ and I have often been accused of being dreamers, and what we lacked in material wealth, we more than made up for in dreams. And we gave those to each other whole heartedly.
That was ten years ago and a lot has changed. TJ has since finished his Bachelor’s degree and his Masters and is working on his doctorate. He has one full time job rather than multiple part time ones. We have two cars, neither of which has an inch of duct tape on them, and we have a beautiful house with two (soon to be three) little girls filling the air with laughter and song.
We no longer are that couple surviving off of their dreams.
And that’s the attitude that I brought with me to this poem this afternoon. I was feeling grateful and blessed. And then I read it again, and I realized that the message is about much more than financial gifts and blessings.
See for as long as I can remember, I have always had a problem with guilt. As with everyone, I deal with rational, well-placed guilt, but I also let irrational perfectionism overwhelm me. Today was one of those days. I walked in the door after some errands, and I felt like I had gone through ten rounds in a boxing match except my opponent was inside of me, throwing around guilt instead of punches. I was dazed and overwhelmed, tripping over what was left of me.
I guess I see everything I want to be and everything I expect of myself, and I just simply cannot live up to it. Instead of taking the logical step and reassessing my expectations, I just berate myself over and over again for failing to live up to them.
And I realized that in a way we are all in the situation Yeats describes above. We all want to give the cloths of Heaven to those we love. We want to give the best of ourselves; we want to give even better than ourselves. Perfectionism is poisonous in many situations, but when you apply it to your relationships with others, it can be especially detrimental. I look at the girls and how very much I want to give to them and I see just how little of that I really can.
We simply cannot give the cloths of Heaven (perfection) to those we love because we are human. We err. We falter. We are, in our very essence, broken.
But that doesn’t mean we have nothing to give. We have our dreams to give. Our dreams of all we want to be and all we want to give. We have our belief in hope and in a better day. Our dreams are our best selves because they are all we hope to and aspire to. They are our realized selves.
And so I can’t give all the riches of the universe to either TJ or the girls because they are not mine to give. All I can give them is the best of me, wounds, imperfections and all. And I have to pray that this is enough. That love can take what little I have to give and can magnify it and perfect it and make it into enough. That the gift of my dreams can sustain them until a day when we are all free of the confines and struggles this life saddles us with. Until I do, indeed, have the cloths of Heaven to bestow.
And to TJ, after ten years of ups, downs, ins, and outs, I would still choose your dreams over any other man’s riches in a heartbeat.