Leeks and leaks

Here. This is the life that was given to you. And now is the only moment you are promised.

To hear these dogs growl and spurn at one another as they nip the air with their teeth and tilted jowls, this is to be me in this moment now. To have watery eyes from cutting leeks with a dull knife, to walk away from the chopping board thankful yet again I did not maim my fingers with my poor slicing habits.

In ninteen days I will board a plane from Charleston to Chicago and onwards to Fargo. It has been four full years since I have been back to visit. It has been fourteen years since my family has gone together to the place where our lives began.

All I am promised is this moment I have before me, a velvet candle lit and effects from an Atlantic hurricane angrily thundering above. Sneezes from those leeks and another surge of thankfulness for use of my fingers.

The more I learn the less I know. But in this most difficult year of loss without recoupe, I've begun to embrace how much more similar than dissimilar are our collective human spirits. Perhaps this is most oft discovered through sharing pain and loss, for our hearts feel deeply and find compassion for each other when met with these stories we share. And once we realize that is so much the same, then we realize the lighter parts of us are not entirely different, either.

At any rate; here. Now.