Ainslie Claire

Tonight, I got an email from two of my friends. They just had a baby. A sweet tiny little perfect baby. A little lumpy looking and red-faced right now, but still sweet and perfect.

It is funny the way the world works.

These are two friends of mine from high school. I remember when we were all just friends, and the two of them were dating different people. One dated another friend of mine, and they actually had a date at my house, which for some odd reason I remember vividly. And the other had a date or two with my cousin when we were all freshmen in high school. She liked him, and he liked her, but he was shy and so it never happened. 14 year old boys, you know. The funny thing is (well, to me anyway) that her husband has the same name as my cousin, and my cousin's birthday is 2 days after she gave birth to her first child.

Every day is somebody's birthday, you know? And every day means something to someone. I've often thought about that before. What day will I get married on? What day will I give birth to my first child? Dates that have meant nothing for years and years all of a sudden mean everything. I've also wondered what day will be days of sadness. Those dates are also remembered year to year.

It is funny, but life just somehow works out. All these seemingly disconnected moments add up to lots of something in the end. My friend and my cousin have almost totally forgotten about each other. And why not? They only had 2 dates...if you count that group one...And they haven't seen each other for years. But I was involved, those 2 dates mattered to me somehow, and now 15 years later, here I am writing about them.

I guess all of this is to say that you never know. You just never know. I always say that love has no rules. I think that people try too often to make love obey some made-up rules. Like two people who break up never get back together and stay together. I've heard that one before, but I know exceptions to that rule. Or if it's rough in the beginning, it'll never smooth out. I know exceptions to that one too. Love has no rules. It cannot be ruled, and it cannot be controlled, despite our best efforts. And life too. Life has no rules, and it cannot be controlled. It behooves us to try to figure out both life and love, but we will never know the answers or how it all connects together so that it works just right.

If we did, that'd lose all the fun and adventure. How would we learn any lessons? And there would be no perfect miracles like Ainslie Claire - created by two people who found each other, made it work and fell in love.