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| Love note...Summer 2007 |
Dear Jane,
In the early hours of the morning I had a memory return to me. Isn't it wonderful how they do that sometimes? Like an unanticipated knock on your front door from a beloved childhood friend.
I remembered a trip Jamie took back in the summer of 2007. The trip of a lifetime really. Jamie and his Dad (Pop Pop around our neck of the world) had the opportunity to travel to the wilds of Alaska together. To this day, Jamie speaks of that trip with a certain reverence almost. As if by doing so, he might somehow bottle and preserve the memories of those days spent with his Dad... much like you would the summer bounty of your vegetable garden. Perhaps with the hope of savoring each "memory bite" when the frost of life takes hold.
Adler was just shy of Two at the time and I remember the heaviness I felt as I considered spending Ten days here on the home front...alone. Well, not exactly alone. I'd have my Three trusty sidekicks as company...The youngest of which was smack dab in the middle of his "teethenstein" phase.
I remember Jamie kissing the top of my head as he left to catch his pre-dawn flight. How I'd hoped he would close the front door quietly as to not wake up Addy. In the midst of the morning cha-cha, I received a One word text from Jamie. If I recall It was the word "begin." Weird. I mulled it around in my noggin and shrugged it off as part haphazard and part "Jamie." Again, the following morning right around the same time...a second One word text arrived followed then by a third and a fourth. It wasn't long before I realized Jamie was giving me instructions. A road map of sorts. The coordinates of which all eventually lead up to the desk at which I currently sit. I recall searching the surface of the desk before kneeling to give the underbelly a once over. And, there it was. My bounty, My loot, my treasure. There concealed in a unassuming white business sized envelope was a love note accompanied by a silver dollar sized pressed and laminated flower. The flower had been picked and pressed the previous summer on a hike Jamie had taken into the Wind River mountain range in Wyoming. I use it now as a bookmark and often, it is the last object my eyes see before turning off my bedside lamp and surrendering to sleep.
I recalled this morning how eager I had been each day to receive my next "text-clue"...and even sometimes being mildly annoyed that I'd have to wait to receive the next piece to the ever evolving puzzle.
Lately I have found myself in a similar state. Wishing, waiting, wanting for answers. Checking my life-inbox almost incessantly. Searching for coordinates that might help explain the unexplainable. Wanting desperately to "skip ahead". To hold the answers in my white envelope now!
Just this morning I found myself explaining to my Oliver that soon he'd be able to read just like his big brother Addy. That as he grew older, so would his understanding. Why do I expect different from myself? Why do I expect different from my current life circumstance? As if by skipping to the end and avoiding the chapters in between I might somehow spare myself pain? When, in reality, by wading through each chapter....Sometimes painstakingly so, I breathe life back into myself again and again. With oxygen I never even knew I held in reserve. And often times the elusive answers meet me there....White envelope or not.
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| Love note August 6, 2013 If I could, I'd bottle my love and place it in your heart pantry. -Sara |
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