No Dead Ends
Pencils being sharpened
A labyrinth.
A pathway that twists and turns, no dead ends.
No mistakes.
My feet within it.
Be here. Where your feet are, I remember thinking.
It was the summer of 2019. Thatcher had graduated and hadn’t yet left for ASU. I was going to a workshop in Northern California and got to not only see my best friend from college but my sister from another mister and spend time at the beach. I did the 18 mile drive in Monterey. There is so much that version of myself didn’t know.
It was one of those summers where we spent more time in California than Washington. Tim and I had gone to Cape Cod for my birthday and I was starting my first full year at Hollywood Hill. Mason had played All-Stars and our time in Carlsbad included napkin folding classes and hikes in the hills. Thatcher worked at the Y and Cooper was about to start at the farm. Even then my dad wasn’t in a lot of pictures, and we didn’t have the dogs.
Summer of 2019
None of us knew what was coming.
This family had no idea.
The country didn’t know. The calendar would flip and Covid, death, heartbreak.
And yet in the pictures, my feet are firmly in a labyrinth as I remember thinking, be where your feet are.
Enjoy the moments.
Love the people.
Looking back I can tell that we had fun, I see the laughter and the lightness.
We know now what can come. We know now what we didn’t know then. And yet.
And yet, I think we have found it again. The laughter and the light. The ability to be where our feet are. At least I keep practicing.
Life can feel this way. Twists and turns. Dead ends and restarts. Mistakes we learn from, others we suffer through. At times a maze. With hope and patience, perhaps more of a labyrinth we learn to navigate. Bigger than we can see from where we stand.
Yes, we found the laughter again, and the light, but we are not the same.
Still we move forward, feet in our shoes, shoes on the path.
Before you go add your answer to the comments:
What is a picture you look back on and notice that everything has shifted?
