the apple of my eye

Last night, I got somehow lassoed by the TV into watching a romantic comedy called "Love is All You Need." I suppose it could be called a chick flick -- touching but with smiles. I am increasingly drawn to such gentle fantasies and this one had a complexity to family connections that kept me watching, kept drawing me in. If it was sappy, I am increasingly a sap and was touched in some deep ways.

A kind of meandering sorrow overtook me even as I knew the movie would end on a happy note. "Knowing is not the same as knowing," the sorrow whispered. And what did I wish for so silently and know that I did not know? I wished that I might, in my lifetime, have been the apple of someone's eye and lived in that sweetness, trusting and safe. But I was not brought up to believe it was possible I might be the apple of someone's eye -- I was not worthy of such affection and so, even if I had been the apple of someone's eye, I had not grown up being capable of accepting such a designation. It was a conundrum whose meandering sorrow extended from root to branch.

My parents were not raised up to be the apple of anyone's eye, I was not raised up to be the apple of anyone's eye and, being trained as I was, I was not capable of making anyone the apple of my eye. How I must have short-changed my family and friends and .... it was a meandering sorrow. I am sorry, but at this late date it is a bit like being sorry I did not have a sixth finger or a third eye: Done is done and the best I can do is pray that too much harm was not done ... to wife, to children, to kith and kin.

The movie sucked me in and warmed me to the extent that I could be sad.