What I mean by this is that there’s great forces of life, love, motion, age and change happening constantly, and when I can expand my vision beyond my normal churning thoughts (e.g. will everyone I love be okay, am I good enough, am I living right, and who do I pray to when I need a parking space?), I can connect with how grateful I am to alive.
Case in point: sitting in the living room at my mother-in-law’s after the big meal, about 13 of us easilyy tossing each other some humor like it was a balloon. There were some almost awkward silences, but there no one much tried to fill the gap with television or other distractions. We all just kept hanging out, talking about whatever came up, even if it it was just our favorite TV show. I couldn’t help thinking about my father-in-law, gone not quite two years, and how his absence may be helping us appreciate one another more because we all know how tenuous life can be. In the corner, I glimpsed my niece napping, curled up around her mother; my son talking into the ipad and making it turn his voice
Just an hour ago, Ken came in and said he had a moment coming upstairs from the basement when he saw how everything we live is something we create together, a kind of construct that seems so sturdy and yet is fragile. It makes me think of the poem in the film Wings of Desire, that asks, “Why am I me and not you?” We land places, take root or migrate elsewhere, make lives that seem all-encompassing. Sturdy and fragile because of time. Beautiful and alive nevertheless.
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