A Drop of Ink

Do you remember when we were young, and the world seemed simple? When play outweighed work in our life balance. We were giddy with delight, snowed in together, reveling in all of our short wintertime’s possibilities of coziness and adventure, sipping hot chocolate in the igloo we built. Do you remember the tricks we learned on the monkey bars in recess and the seemingly endless games of The Ground is Lava and Tag we played? Or the time we spilled oil paint that was supposed to be for a jungle on our classroom wall all over our classroom floor? The obstacle courses we would build for ourselves, racing through the apartment, the magic shows we would put on and all the delicious things we would bake. Do you remember the games of sardines we’d play, all cramming into a tiny hiding place and bursting into laughter when the last person found us? And the letters we used to write to each other, sending them from one city to the other in the hands of your sister, chronicling our da...

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck. Proverbs 1:8-9 I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the times I’ve been told how great my parents are. And every time I hear it, I smile and nod in agreement… and think to myself, “You only know the half of it.” None of these people have had the privilege of being my parents’ daughter, at least not to the extent that I did and do. I have learned a lot from my parents. Some things they taught me intentionally, some I learned simply by growing up in our home. My parents, through the eyes of what they passed down to me: My dad taught me many practical things: how to exchange electrical switches, drive a car, change a tire, check the oil, fix a bike wheel, build a fire. From my dad I learned how to stain and varnish wood, through the countless pieces of furniture he made that were my training ground. I ...

Sometimes I imagine what it would look like to see the passengers of a plane flying without the plane around them. Just a couple hundred people sitting in rows, gliding through the air – up and up. How strange. How strange flying is. How fast we get from one place to another, thousands of kilometers in between. Big metal tubes transporting our bodies – but what about the rest of us? What about our minds? Our hearts? Do they always come along with us so quickly? I don’t think so. I think sometimes my head and heart lag behind. Or freeze in the in between, abandoned wholly to flight mode, refusing to process where I was or where I am going, lost in a book or lost in thought… where are all the people going? Where did they come from? Is anyone else leaving home for home? Does anyone else feel bitter and sweet in equal proportion? Would anyone else weep if it weren’t for the sheer monotony, familiarity, and anonymity of airports… security checks… passport control? Is anyone else so damn...

Do take off your watch and forget, for a moment, the passage of time. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t let us do this very often. Our calendars don’t allow us to slow down, they are too full of very important happenings, written down in permanent ink. No, not ink. We don ’t have time for paper calendars, we save our appointments in our smart phones, thereby saving trees. Trees we don’t really see anymore. We have places to be. We have deadlines. We’re busy. But every once in a while, there is a pocket of nothing and everything, a warp in time, and we become aware of a sky full of stars outside, waiting to be gazed upon. It beckons us and for once we go, not to get anywhere, but simply to see. We pedal through the fields, reveling in our late-night biker gang spontaneity. We lay out our picnic blanket in the path, nowhere in particular, and settle down and into each other’s presence to behold the stars and embrace fellowship. Time loses meaning as the conversation slows and de...