Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Love after Love, Derek Walcott 

          (Me....  About the time I found this poem..... A few moons ago!)

I wrote about this poem six years ago.  Here..  But today I want to visit this poem again.  And today, even though some of these words are still elusive, I can't wait any longer for this recognition to happen...  I live as the daughter and "room mate" of a woman who has recognized herself in the mirror probably all her life.  My dear mother knows herself, knows who she is, is a realist about the qualities of life that matter to her.  Mom has always been generous, enthusiastic, kind, capable, and confident.  There is a strength in her that has given her the practical grace to live fully and vibrantly even though she has been confined to a walker for more than ten years...  

I don't have that.  My gifts, for what they are worth, are entirely separate.  But that's okay.  So are yours.  For Heaven's sake, the sun is warm, the trees begin to tint, and there has never, EVER, been a better time to sit, feast on our lives.