(Time)

I can see his movement so clearly. I’ve been inspecting and learning and grappling with time since my anxious heart prepared to leave for round two. I was knowingly headed back into the unnerving and I wasn’t sure I could swallow it. Ten more months. Everything in me was prepared to count them down and wish it away. Even better, let me set these nonessential days off in parentheses and remove them from the story altogether.

My insides were filled with a well of emotions and great loss; I didn't expect such a sudden, yet prolonged, crashing of ideals around me. Things were not all bad— no, there was good, but the best things, the longings of my heart, were all a countdown away. I didn’t know how to hold the time, to revel in it and squeeze every ounce of Singapore goodness from it.

It was a creation handcrafted for us, one that makes him glad. I spoke those words on the pier this summer and I couldn’t get them out of my head. 

I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if it was counting graces or signing the paper or warding off countdown apps, but six months later I started waking up to the moments. Happy. Present. I laughed—hard—when he smothered his face with icing and another one kept falling out of his chair and they danced the dinosaur stomp in unison. Tears welled when she told her story, when I listened to words from that children’s storybook, when the lyrics ran deep and straight down to my core. I’ve gripped more shoulders, taken more pictures, stared at my phone much much less and considered hearts over schedules and expectations.

The living slow has been a blessing and awakened the spirit. There are still days when time doesn’t feel so easy, to flow so abundantly. In those moments my heart slips back into its old wanderings. I don’t know how to stay in this time. I don’t even know how it happened, but I know it is good and I embrace it.

Stop Being So Religious

What
Do sad people have in
Common?
It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.
What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
So religious
Like
That. 

Hafiz