Right Here, Right Now

*Note: This was written in 2010. It is now April 29, 2013.

       

Do you ever just stop, take a look around, and think to yourself how you never thought you’d be “right here, right now”?

 

Do you ever let your life rewind in your mind’s eye and assess the events that led up to Now? How every tiny event got braided with the next, until your life has become one apparatus with long strings hanging down to the burbur carpet?

 

It’s as though you can funnel those strings through your fingertips, yet it’s impossible to grasp the full picture of what they will look like once they’ve become a part of the whole. And you can trace your fingertips backwards, to the tight ball of yarn… You never imagined it would end up looking the way it does now; this half-finished product…with some gaps here and there, from days when you weren’t spot-on with your craft, days you were distracted from the image you held in your mind from when you first picked up those needles…days when you just simply stuck it through the wrong spot. But that’s ok, because when you look at the piece, imperfections and all, you can genuinely say that it still looks beautiful; it’s still exactly what it’s supposed to be, what it was meant to be, all along…

 

Tomorrow marks the 11-year anniversary of Dad’s death. April 29, 2010. I have a student who was born on the same exact day that Dad died. April 29, 1999.

 

I wonder what the time was when she greeted her loved ones. Was is possibly during the same moments that her mother was in sheer agony, so was I?

 

Possibly so. Except the end results were polar opposites…Her emotions took a turn for the better, mine for the worse. Her life gained purpose, mine lost meaning.

 

He was 65 and his crocheted piece came to fruition. No more string left to loop through … I’ve still got some strings hanging from my own ball of yarn, but they fall into the darkness of the Unknown

 

I hope that when I start to reach the end of my strings that I will be able to gaze into the reflection of the piece admirably, knowingly. And I pray that I will be surrounded by loved ones who can trace their fingers on it, right beside me, while we talk about how all those different paths led us to Now.

 

Exactly where we’re supposed to be.