Sometimes a word pops into my head. It will seem random and disconnected to what I think my state of mind is at the time. This word will follow me around. It will repeat itself in my head a hundred times like a mantra. I might say it out loud in several different kinds of voices and accents. Sometimes I do not know the definition of the word. Sometimes I look it up in the dictionary, sometimes I don't. There is something magical about how the word has to bounce around my very being until it has had its fill.
PROFUNDITY
This word found me as I was slicing a bagel and thinking about how my mother's jade ring no longer fits my finger now that I don't think about her everyday after her passing. Standing by the kitchen sink I started to smile as the old familiar habit began. Profundity. Pro-fun-di-ty. Profun-dity. Pro-fundity. In my head I spelled it differently and thus I thought it meant something else.
Profundity: deep insight; great depth of knowledge or insight.
I had to stop and think about this a moment. What the hell was so deep this morning that I had to have this word in my life? What is the connection between the bagel and the ring besides the circle?
For me bagels represent a certain amount of happiness. I remember my first real NYC bagel from a Jewish bakery that my friend brought up from a visit with family. It was the size of my head and put me in a carb coma that I hoped I would never leave. I share bagels with my boyfriend on the weekends. It is something we do. It feels like love to me. It means we will have a conversation over the sink waiting for them to toast. It is never deep conversation but it is loving. It is covered with smiles and sleepy faces.
Wearing my mother's ring got me through the period after her death. I felt like this particular ring was in her collection only because it reminded her of me. It wasn't something she would wear, but something she would have known I would love. I wore the ring to remind me it was ok to cry, ok to be sad, ok to move on with my life, ok to forgive her for all the rotten things she put me through, and ok to love the hardships I wanted to hate. I felt stronger wearing the ring. I felt like she was there with me waiting for me to stop being a baby about life.
I still cry sometimes, like right now, but they are getting farther apart. I don't need the ring as much as I need and want the bagels. I think this is progress.
I realized that the ring and the bagel are both circles, both symbols of connection for me; one of strength and one of happiness. They both continue infinitely.
That, my friends, is some deep shit.
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