looking through me

Category: Uncategorized

July 19, 2015

dots in the dark

Sometimes I feel like a little dot making my way through vast darkness. One pixel in billions. And all I see is me. As though there’s a tiny glow around my little dot barely cutting into the murkiness.

I roam in self-absorbed darkness. Sometimes I run into things and the impact redirects my path a bit or might even launch me in a new direction. Sometimes I bounce along an obstruction for a long time before I reach open space.

But what if the obstacles are people? What if they aren’t forces working against me but beings moving along their own paths? What if I only see the spectrum of light that illuminates my path, but instead of my little dot moving in darkness my little dot is really moving in a sea of other little dots with their own spectrum of light surrounding them?

If that’s true—and I think it is—then every time my path crosses or bounces off or runs alongside something it might be an opportunity not a hindrance.

What if each encounter was a divine appointment?

I forget my life isn’t all about me. My path is interwoven into lives and journeys all around me. Even when I don’t recognize it, my dot is in play interacting with other dots. And I might be affecting their trajectories, too.

We’re specks in a massive story that dwarfs us all, yet we each matter. Each dot is a full person. The sea of humanity is made up of individual humans. What if I saw the real lives all around me? What if I lived aware the dot next to me has hopes and dreams and fears and feelings just like I do? Or maybe that dot’s having a rough day and could use grace from me when our shoulders rub at work or in the checkout line. Maybe I keep colliding with this dot because I have something to offer or a way to be of service. Or maybe there’s something I need to learn from that individual if I stopped viewing her as a frustrating impediment in my way.

When I look beyond myself it’s much easier to see my fellow dots. It’s much easier to see our colors bleeding together into our shared scene of the story.

 

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July 15, 2015

celebrating family

Today is Grandpa’s birthday. He’s 82. Our world is very different today than it was two summers ago. He and Grandma are side-by-side once again, but the journey of aging has not been easy for either of them. Grandma, at 91, is on hospice. Grandpa is still fighting to regain as much of his independence as possible. But today is a day to celebrate, to reflect on that last big party and the joy of being family . . . 

Side-by-side in the kitchen Mom dices bell peppers as I wash raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and strawberries.

We spend a summer afternoon rotating from counter to sink to stove. She preps the Italian casserole for Grandpa’s 80th birthday party, and I work on the trifle components: the lemon-sour cream pound cake has finished cooling before I prepare the mixed-berry sauce and cook the lemon curd. She finishes the main dish and moves on to making piecrusts.

Sometimes we sing a line of the hymns playing in the other room. Between measuring and stirring we reminisce about each of our earliest hymn memories: words we didn’t understand and whom we asked for clarity; the rich language we were both drawn to as children and cling to as adults.

We easily work together and alone. We switch sides so she can stir at the stove for me while I open a new bag of flour for her. Her hands tip the pan as I scrape the berry sauce into its container to wait for the trifle assembly tomorrow morning.

As she shreds the chicken and I zest the lemons Mom talks about the struggle of watching her parents age. Their table and chairs arrived in her dining room yesterday as they downsize to a smaller apartment in their retirement home. Last night she tried on gloves her mom and grandmother once wore. Grandma’s teacups are being gifted to three generations of daughters.

It’s good to be together. To let the words ease out as we work. To feel the week slip away as the pastry blender cuts through the dough and the butter melts into the lemon curd.

Just as Mom’s hugs are the only hugs that can calm the roiling emotions and tears of growing up whether I’m 15 or 32, sharing the kitchen with her is deep therapy. It reinforces how very, very much she’s taught me, how talented she is, how profoundly she loves her family, how food is a language we both speak to those we love . . . how thoroughly I am her daughter.

The rhythm of home pulses loudest in the kitchen with Mom steadily keeping the beat for us all.

 

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