Today I drove to NY to spend the weekend with family. A certain little one is having a first birthday. Some are having a difficult time right now. I hadn’t seen my dad since Father’s Day – June 17 – and here it was October. My sister just got two tiny lab puppies. Shopping centers in my town expanded exponentially. A lot had changed since I was here in June.
It was time to visit home. Too much time had passed since I was here last. In my 59 years I have never been away from this town that long. It was really really good to come back. Tonight my husband and I went to dinner at my sister’s to see the puppies. Tomorrow I’ll spend some time with my dad and have my daughter over for dinner. Sunday the whole family will be together for the birthday. On this October night, it just feels like kindred family spirits are all around. Nice. Secure. Familiar.
That’s how I felt sitting around my sister’s dinner table tonight. Her window decorations helped me tune into the season and the impending holiday. As I looked at the faces around the table I succumbed to the realization that things had changed. People left and kids grew up. Change. There it is again. People, jobs, family, lives, all change so incrementally slow that it almost goes unnoticed until, after such a long time, you turn and look back.
My morning meditation cited Ecclesiastes:
“For everything there is a time and a season….”
Then it asked three questions:
1. Why might we try to hang onto things for so long?
2. What happens when we continually hold onto things we like? Do we leave room for new things that we might like to enter our lives?
3. How can we practice “letting things go” when their seasons pass?
This morning I raced over this passage thinking that this doesn’t apply to me today. How wrong I was.
And so, as another day goes by, I’m stunned by the passage of time, and…I have written.
Photo – I must say, my sister does do a nice window……
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