When we are young, we remember with our senses. We remember what color our grandfather’s favorite chair was, and the peculiar texture of our kindergarten teachers wild curly hair. In particular, I remember the very first book that I ever read on my own, and how powerful that was. My first taste of independence.
It is much more to me now, to look back on it with the ability to name that moment, to define what exactly made it special. The experience, however nameless, was absolutely delicious.
I knew that something marvelous must be happening. When does all that independence become so daunting?
When I look at my godson, and my nieces and nephews, as they run wild around me, I can spot the flash of those experiences in their eyes. It has been taking me back, and making me more thoughtful.
It has also made me grateful.
It could have been the holidays too, and what a friend of mine calls the ‘hurricane of love’ that I was met with, in these first difficult months of this year.
So it is with my senses that I have been approaching things. Trying to get back to those experiences. I will call them simple pleasures for sake of your time, and my tendency to ramble on, but in truth they are anything but Simple. Pleasures for certain, they are my particular way of remembering the people that I am longing for. That part, I suppose, is what makes it simple. Childish too, but maybe the two are somewhat linked.
Childishness and simplicity. The muckity muck has been removed. There is nothing left but the shoe shine.
Within my memory, I am cataloging those wonderful things that I can remember about my mother, and looking forward to all of the things that I will share with my love when he finally returns.
In the mean time, I am enjoying all the flashes, in all of these eyes. The people that I love and that have been my hurricane.
Thank you.
