Seashells line my window sills, some broken but still beautiful in their various curves and colors, others unflawed samples of nature's artwork. They remind me to accept the various fragments of my life, with unconditional love, despite the broken chambers of my heart.
With time, fractured dreams grow less jagged and no longer slice our longing in two. The hurt softens, until even grief itself grows smooth to the touch. Sorrow doesn't dissipate but instead integrates itself into the texture of a life, changing the patterns, muting some angles while sharpening others.
I wonder who I would be without Elias's early birth story. Without the realization that loss lies behind every corner, that control lives only as a mirage, that expectations, like embers, lose their light with the winds of time.
Perhaps I would have learned this in another way, if Elias arrived full term, brain un-injured, a typical baby boy with chubby cheeks and healthy lungs. Who knows what tragedies may have awaited another version of Elias who ran before his first year and climbed every obstacle in his way.
Loss lies behind every corner, no matter how much we try to insulate those we love from harm's inevitable touch. And maybe knowing this can help us appreciate the life we witness, the life we hold, like broken shells rolled smooth.
After a year of unimaginable losses due to Covid-19, I wonder how we will reshape our lives as this pandemic slowly releases its icy grip. Will we rush to return to a "normal" that never was or embrace a new understanding of the interconnections between us all. The realization there is no "other", only us, living here on this wounded planet, with more beauty than our limited sight can behold.
As the climate warms, snow in Alaska turns to days of rain, grey sheets of water fling from the sky as we shuffle to and fro, dreaming of warmer days or the entertainment of boundless white flakes. And yet as soon as despair takes ahold, the weather shifts, the sun returns like a beacon of hope, that despite all that is lost, there is still endless light.
There is still endless light.
I am who I am because of the losses I bear and because of the love that survives every hardship, every tragic turn of events. Love is such a basic ingredient, such a simple choice, and yet the most complex power to behold.
Loss lies behind every corner--but love lives within our collective breath.
I named one of my puppets Sage, a small white polar bear who reminds the elementary students at the school where I work as a a counselor to breathe. Sage loves unconditionally and without restraint.
I wish you could see the way the kids faces light up when I pull Sage from my big purple bag of puppets. Sage doesn't have witty answers or solutions to all the kids' problems, only the power of an open heart and the rhythm of breath, tools we all hold in our various sizes, shapes, and colors of hands.
Elias and I took a short walk today, down what we call the "Big Tree Trail" and back up our driveway. He navigated snow, ice, and down trees with his cane and his grit. As we came to the edge of the woods, I told him I would wait for him in a patch of sunlight on our driveway. Elias joined me and we stood side by side with our eyes closed, faces tilted toward the warmth of the essential star.
"Its nice to be in the sun," Elias said.
"It sure is--what is your favorite thing about the sunshine?"
He paused for a bit and right when I thought he didn't have an answer for my question he replied: "How it makes our driveway interesting."
Not the answer I expected but I should know by now that I can never anticipate where my inquiries will lead or how my children will respond. The sun hid from us for days and yet here it is casting shadows, warming our eyelids, changing the texture of the snow at our feet.
It makes our driveway interesting. Isn't that what we want? An interesting path to the place we call home. To all the places and people that hold our heart and claim it as their own.
I collect more rocks than shells on my beach walks here in Alaska, so different from the Cape Cod and Florida sandy shores of my childhood; but occasionally I find a small shell amongst the black rocks. My Mom sends me shells from her various outings and whenever I visit the East Coast I fly back with whole and broken pieces in my suitcase.
I think we all carry these whole and broken pieces in our hearts, symbols of all the people and places we have loved and lost along this winding path of ours. A path that leads us places we never imagined, where loss lies behind every corner-- but love lives within our collective breath.
Where there is still, and always will be, endless light.
As Amanda Gorman says in her inauguration day poem "The Hill We Climb":
"For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it
if only we're brave enough to be it."
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