Last night, I ran 2.75 miles at dusk. The street lights came on and the moon hung above my head as I raced to make it home. I finally walked when I turned onto my street. Usually while running, my head is full of thoughts...thoughts of other people's problems, how to help them, how to help me. But on this night, I just felt so thankful...moved to tears thankful.
The sky was so clear with a shade of sunlight left. There was a light breeze that cooled me down after the long run. I looked around and it was as if I saw my neighbors' homes for the first time. I love my street. I love my house. I love my yard, my neighbors, my husband, children, pets...my everything. Nothing is perfect...yet, everything is.
I suddenly prayed and my heart lifted to God. "Please, Lord, let me enjoy this with all the time I have left on this earth." I know I won't be able to live in this house forever. I know this house will not always be home to my children. I know things will change.
Tonight, I was reading to Ellison while she drank her bottle. It was the last chapter in the book Little House in the Big Woods by Laure Ingalls Wilder. I thought of Laura, in her 60s, writing this book almost as a memoir of her childhood life. She missed her parents who were deceased and even Mary was dead by the time Laura started to write these books. But these stories brought Ma, Pa and her sister back to life. I read the words in this final paragraph in this final chapter and looked into my daughter's eyes...not going to lie...I teared up.
"What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, "This is now."
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.
Now is now, but so soon it will be yesterday. Hold on.
