I can't sleep…
While she cooked she’d looked out the window and the daffodils were blooming around the birdbath, and Henry was home, and the house was quiet, and she felt her own luck. There was Henry home and Charlie and Tommy and her house with the bird feeder and summer vacation soon and she felt her own luck at having this quiet moment, this life, this day.
~ Sharon Guskin, The Forgetting Time: A Novel
Photo: Elif Sanem Karakoc
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else.
What you must do is this:
“Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.”
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
~ Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
Notes:
My fingers are on the keyboard.
I punch out the subject heading on the email:
“It’s high time – long overdue.”
She’s a functional partner that supports our team. I don’t know how long she’s been in the role. (Red-faced)
“Hi! Not sure why today and not yesterday, or a year ago, or two.”
She’s steady, effective. The antithesis of flamboyant. And she’s there. Always There.
“Just wanted to say thank you for your support…”
She doesn’t interrupt. She’s a listener. And, professional, responsive and conscientious.
“You care. It’s obvious in everything you touch…”
I proof re-read, pause, and then add:
A Christian is one who is on the way,
though not necessarily very far along it,
and who has at least some dim
and half-baked idea of whom to thank.
– Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
Notes:
Imagine you wake up
with a second chance:
The blue jay hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands,
spreading glorious shade.
If you don’t look back,
the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits –
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours
to write on, blown open to a blank page.
Come on, shake a leg!
You’ll never know who’s down there,
frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.
– Rita Dove, “Dawn Revisited” from On the Bus With Rosa Parks.
Credits: Poem – Schonwieder via literarymiscellany. Image: Marc Gutierrez via Mennyfox55