Perfectly Imperfect

Or is it imperfectly perfect?

One of my husband’s dearest friends since grade school went to see his 100 year old grandmother at the assisted living facility she has recently moved into last week-end. There is a giant grand piano and the room, he said, has nothing but skylights so the sun comes in from everywhere. He brought sandwiches and played for her.

As he was leaving, he said she held both his eyes, looked into his eyes, and said, “This was perfect.” He has a PhD in music and is a master to say the least. Humble too. So he said, “Well I don’t know about that, Grandma, but….”

She squeezed his hands, “It was perfect. This afternoon was perfect.”

The bigger truth of it crushed him. My husband, Joe, and I both cried, talking about it over lunch. Of course. Of course it was perfect.

We have become so critical.

We rate our performance. Well, the b flat could have been held a little longer and I drifted a bit on the second verse. We evaluate the circumstances. The pastrami was a bit dry. I wish I could stay longer, come more often.

We try so hard to perfect the details sometimes we lose sight of the moment.

In the last months my mom had cancer, Joe and I took a day off work and planned to take her to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her favorite museum, the one she had taken us to every weekend as children.

She arrived at 9 as agreed upon. We were ready to go. Coffee made and scones on the table for a quick pre-drive snack. And we had printed out the different exhibits so she could choose whichever she desired.

She came in, dressed beautifully, as always, sat down out of breath, and said apologetically, “I am so sorry guys, but I don’t think I am strong enough to go.”

She persevered through everything, with grace and elegance usually accompanied by a basket of freshly baked blueberry muffins or a platter of generously frosted cupcakes for the children with garden cut peonies adorning the side.

Can’t go? But, but, what will we do? How can we make it special? What does this mean? Is her health waning? Panicky thoughts filled the first half-second. Fear the next. And then in an instant, it became beautifully clear… she had made it to our house.

She was here! With us!

The plans faded as if they had never been hatched. Joe made a fire. I wrapped the cashmere blanket around her, put the matching down feather pillow under her head. And then remembered Mark Doty’s book length essay I had just begun called, Still Life With Oysters and Lemon. The 17th-century Dutch still life that serves as the title is actually located at the Met. So I thought perhaps serendipity?

We had coffee first, but then, too tired for conversation, she lay back and I read for a couple hours, holding her legs and feet on my lap, painting the room with Doty’s observations on grief, beauty, time, love and the poetically eloquent way he weaves together objects in the painting with intimate details of his personal life.

I paused frequently to look at her beautiful, serene face sleeping and continued. After a while, I closed the book, lay behind her and held her, gently– close.

It was a perfect morning. Perfect.

The dictionary describes perfect as: ideal, beyond compare, without flaws, unsurpassed.

What could be more perfect?

We had a similar morning outside the hospital with Joe’s Mimi not long before the end of her life. We had wheeled her outside and Leo, who was just beginning to read, read to her from his book.

Her eyes got wide and stayed that way till he was done.

“That was amazing. Just amazing,” she said.

“He’s doing really well and with practice…” I continued…

Looking directly at Leo, she spoke quietly over me, “Honey, that was just incredible. I don’t know how you can do that.” Leo smiled, looked really proud and began telling her.

The benches were cold and hard. Mimi’s health was failing. We looked out at the parking lot. It was perfect.

Is it possible that perfect is not the way it could be, but the way it is?

Prevailing definitions say no. They say perfect is defined as: 1) conforming absolutely to the description or definition of an ideal type. 2) having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics.

But it begs some elemental questions.

What exactly is the ideal type? Who decides? And what elements are required? 

What if the ideal type is simply to be present and accepting of the moment? The person who decides is you. And there is but one required element: love.