“It was a thirty foot cliff. And he dared me to the jump. I was nervous at first, but then this lean and lanky kid jumped. And without hesitation, I jumped. Man, I just took the plunge and jumped.” The woman is sitting about five rows behind me in the airplane, but she has a megaphone voice and almost every person in a one mile vicinity can hear her private conversation. This loud banter makes me nervous. All I can [...]
Life Lessons
She sat silent in the corner. A black scarf covered the top of her head. Only a few words were exchanged. Her conversation came in the form of intricate designs on my sister’s hand. She traced the design on my sister’s skin with a henna cone and her free hand. There wasn’t a guidebook of henna templates or drawings that she copied. Instead, the fingers and her imagination created the detailed paving of lines on my sister’s palm. I [...]
This past Saturday night, we attended an engagement party for my little sister and her fiance. Since our daughter has learned that her aunt (affectionately called Masi in the Indian language) is getting married, she breaks down in raindrop size tears. She tells me, “Masi is getting married so she won’t be my Masi anymore.” I try to calm her down and tell her that her aunt will always be her aunt, but part of me knows that she will [...]
This past Saturday afternoon we spent time moving through ordinary tasks. Folding laundry, paying bills, and general clean-up took most of the day. This routine is something I usually cherish. As my husband and I finished our tasks, we talked about fixing a late afternoon snack. Our daughter overheard our conversation. Within a span of a few minutes, we heard the rustle of the bag sheltering the bread and the refrigerator opening. I asked my daughter what she was doing [...]
There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein Two days ago, every single instance of inconvenience created a churning irritability in my gut. Each one of us has experienced days when we feel everything is a nuisance. Even though there is nothing really “wrong” we channel that energy into a negative mood. Part of me wallowed in this defeatist attitude. My [...]
For the first time this year, I am dedicating the days of 2012 to one word: compassion. In the past I’ve written resolutions. By mid-February these goals are lost in the shuffle of life. Keeping a single word in mind will enforce a clarity that is new territory for me, but a plan that I am wholly enthusiastic about. My need to embrace compassion came from an unexpected source. Last year I read The Same Kind of Different As Me, [...]
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day. ~Benjamin Disraeli New Year’s Eve is something that I’ve never quite understood. In all honesty, the celebration of time passing carries sadness for me. Because the movement of the clock is so pensive, counting down the seconds to the next year is not an activity I relish. My past has brought me to above realization. In 2008, I witnessed New Year’s Eve in [...]
I knocked on the door but no one answered. A lone black container took vigil on the porch. I knocked again. Silence. The door stayed closed. I know it won’t open, but yet I am not ready to say goodbye. My car keys slip out of my hand. The jingle of the metal landing on the porch took me to a time when I had the right keys to enter. Not anymore. I drove to my childhood home in September [...]
“My whole life is in that house.” That’s what Madonna Badger screamed on Christmas morning as her Connecticut house burned to the ground with her three children and her parents still trapped inside. On December 25, 2011, Ms. Badger lost her past and her legacy. In an instant, everything for her changed. I am humbled when I think about how the permanence our everyday life can be so transient and how ordinary life is what keeps us afloat. We all [...]
As soon as my daughter wakes up, she asks, “How many hours did I sleep?” I’ve learned the hard way that it pleases her if she accumulates more than ten hours of sleep. ”I think you slept for eleven hours. Come on. Let’s get ready for school.” She heads to the bathroom and into the shower and before she puts one foot on the surface of the tile, she asks,” Will you do a hairstyle for me?” In order to [...]
