I Apologize In Advance

As some may know, every night I write down a thought or two before bed. Have for a little more than six years now. Being the narcissist that I am, I go back at the end of the year and rank my favorite ones. The general pattern is to pick the three best writings from each month and come up with an overall top 25.

All that to say about this time each year, I run into problems. Some months I barely find three. Then there are months like last October. Following are numbers four and five, in no particular order, from that month. Both come from a family vacation to the mountains where we took Buxton's cousin, Eve. I imagine few people will be interested to read them, far fewer than if they were pictures, but I just hate the idea that anything not making the top list is generally lost to time. So, if for no one else but myself, here goes:

10-14-09

In the time it takes to record a sitcom, tomorrow comes. As it does tomorrow brings a day well waited for and marked along several calendars for some time. A fall trip to the mountains, just family bundled together in search of adventure and solitude. Buxton returns for the first time, a year older now and a thousand miles past that delicate infant more resembling and angel than this toddling torpedo of a boy. Eve arrives for the first time ever, buckled there into the back seat beside the cousin she loves so much.

Eve never came along with our little family before, at least not overnight nor so far from home. Yet as I booked the room months ago I had her in mind. Because I thought she might enjoy it, because maybe her parents might appreciate the break. Most of all because it seemed the way things ought to be done. Just the same way my aunts and uncles and parents always did with us cousins when I was a kid.

So in a way I suppose taking this beautiful little girl along for a memory hunt is my way of living up to the family name. My heroes never were rich, or famous, or made too much of by anyone outside their own hometowns. They were ordinary people who loved folks around them in extraordinary ways. The way they loved me. The way I always hope I love them back, and just might find some way of paying forward.

And...

10-16-09

Countless thoughts pour as I look upon a waterfall, but they all lead the same place. Where does all this water come from to pound so mightily without ever running dry?

In a mountainside lodge tonight, lamp lit on a living room sofa between sleeping angels to either side, I happen upon my paradigm. The joy coursing through my veins, pumped forcefully by a heart pacing to keep up, makes every bit the river running through my window. Natural as a songbird basking in sunlight. Born in the highest imaginable places and stronger than steel for it. Timeless as timeless can be, so long as the man nearest it shows sense enough not to divert it.

When I look upon my joy for days at a time only to swear it could not keep coming, it does. When I dip my hands into its cool, refreshing flow, it sustains me. My joy is mighty enough to sear through sand and stone, vital enough to breathe life and prosperity through entire populations of people. Not just because of a kissy-faced girl with short orange curls, a beautiful baby boy who hugs on request or the woman resting in the bathtub after another long day of loving the people nearest to her. Not just because of them, just like the river who is there whether the steps leading to him are or not. They just remind me that he is, that he always will be, that more thoughts on more nights like this one come the closer I draw.