Sunlight on blankets

...a dispatch from bewilderness

You are not in charge of getting breast cancer, or MS, or Covid, or being hit by a truck, but you are in charge of the way you frame events, the story you tell. So am I.

Injury will not define my life. Even if it destroyed the life I had before. I will walk forward, sing in the shower, sway in the kitchen, dance a bit, if inspired.

For a few years, I picked from the “blueberry tree.” People may say there are no blueberry trees, but that isn’t true. I stood on my tiptoes for higher branches and knelt on the ground for low-hanging fruit.

I remember fragments. Sunlight on blankets. Leaves falling gently. Birds flying home. My daughter — not flying home. Prayer is about hope. It’s not about having each request answered by God. Lots of times, the answer was No. Lots of times, it is still No.

Once upon a time, I picked armfuls of hydrangea blooms. Plus rosemary, lavender, cilantro, basil just by walking out my door. Sometimes I made the most of all the good things, and the least of the not-so-good. Sometimes I still do. Sometimes I was brave, radiant, funny. Just some of the time.

Sometimes I found miracles. A tree holds its flat, perforated leaves as high as possible to absorb carbon dioxide from the air and fire from the sun. The chlorophyll that makes leaves green, traps photons of sunlight and splits molecules of water so that oxygen floats into the atmosphere, giving us life.