No Trade.

Posted on by Live & Learn

beach-walk

They were walking up the shoreline, Brother and Sister now in their early 20’s. The waves were lapping at their feet, their feet disappearing in sea foam before the waves rolled back into the ocean.

I’m wading through Herzog’s book, now 60% of the way through. My headphones are piping in a Nils Frahm playlist from his album “Felt“. I set the book down to watch them.

Rachel is doing a handstand on the beach while Eric is taking photos. I can see them laughing as she tries it again. They are Friends. All those years of fighting, squabbling and picking on each other in the back seat of the car…All those corrections by Mom and Dad to keep it civil…look at them, they’ve become Friends.

Just as they pass below me, as if on cue, the late afternoon sun streams through the clouds. A warm breeze gusts. And two Pelicans skim the ocean, gliding along with the wind currents.

Herzog said that “Today I would give ten years of my life if I could play the cello with the same ease as breathing. The finest music has a quality of consolation you find nowhere else, with perhaps the exception of religion or being in contact with small children.” 

I glance down at the playlist to see the title of Frahm’s track. It is titled “Less.”

I paused to contemplate Frahm’s tune and Herzog’s words.

Frahm got it half right. “Felt” yes. “Less” no.

As to Werner, I Iove the Cello, but I wouldn’t trade a single moment.

Not one.

36 thoughts on “No Trade.”

  8. This is wonderful! The friendships between our grown kids is one of the greatest things for my husband and I, too. I think it keeps us all close.

  12. Sweet words, David… 🙂 And, yes, I love seeing that my three children are so close and feel very protective of each other…especially my oldest with his young brother (16 years difference between those two). It really is one of the sweetest parts of seeing your children all grown up. They have each other…they will always have each other, and that is such a blessing for me to think of.

  13. so very beautiful, david. i know that feeling and there is nothing like it. after everything, somehow they emerge as true friends with an unbreakable love and caring and a bond between them and that is everything. that is all we wish for –

  16. I appreciate you sharing this reflective moment of the reality of Beautiful Joy … such an honest, intimate breath of a felt moment. A clear indicator of the depth of Love You Shine Forth from Your heart…

  17. I had to read a few times, to get in the groove of it,…and thank you. The rush of it all lately, has me a little far from center…too far for my own liking, reading and putting it all together, just as you had was a certain kind of meditation!

    1. So glad to hear this Bonnie. There’s another way to look at being to far from the center. I’ve now adopted Rebecca Sonlit’s self-description:

      “Centers are supposed to be good things, but I prefer edges.”

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