What's in a day---or a date for that matter?
December 25th always commemorates the birth of Christ. July Fourth, the birth of a new nation.
Wedding dates and subsequent anniversary years, remind us to honor what is so easily lost.
Birthdays are forever etched into our existence. They are significant enough to cause pain when not remembered by people who should. Birthdays stay with us until the day we die and the two numbers become the bookends of our mark on time.
March 17 makes me conscious of color and pinching. April 1 spirits my tricky bone. June 6 means D-Day. August 26 fills me with panic as to how to remember my finicky sister's birthday.
Dates bring joy; dates bring pain. August 12 flips on the video that replays the tense, sad, tender day my dad left the earth and the confusing days that followed.
We can't take away other people's dates or the way they choose to honor, disregard, or suffer. Date markers may be as important as the substance that makes them so.
But how I wish I could ease the pain of certain days. The day my daughter's world fell apart is looming. She dreads the day and like an imagined monster it grows meaner, uglier, as it nears. The circumstances building up to that day are like the snow that falls before an avalanche. On that day, she expects to be buried under sliding ice and snow.
I will be on alert and there to dig her out.
Yet, I am resisting its pull into making it my day too. Resisting its pull to commemorate something I wish to forget. I am fighting the force of an avalanche.
Able to predict an avalanche, I can help prepare her through it. Her birthday follows twenty days later, but we will birthday gift her the night before. Her birthday gift will be a distraction. She'll need to set it up, read deeply the instructions, and play with her gift.
Avalanche day is a Friday. I can offer to watch the children, bake a cake; should I send flowers? Flowers of condolence or flowers of celebration?
~~
In the spring, as my friend Karen readied to move, we decided to commemorate our friendship on a last walk together. We drove to the woods and hiked upward to a trail that would end in waterfall.
Along the way, we came upon unexpected terrain: the remnants and destruction of an avalanche. Though the winter snow had long ago melted, the path of runaway snow held to the mountain. In the patches that had cleared, trees lay bended to the ground; but they'd survived, and they were slowly uprighting themselves. The avalanche of snow had bended them by force, but it hadn't severed the limbs from their trunks, nor the trunks from their roots.
Clearly, one can survive an avalanche.
December 25th always commemorates the birth of Christ. July Fourth, the birth of a new nation.
Wedding dates and subsequent anniversary years, remind us to honor what is so easily lost.
Birthdays are forever etched into our existence. They are significant enough to cause pain when not remembered by people who should. Birthdays stay with us until the day we die and the two numbers become the bookends of our mark on time.
March 17 makes me conscious of color and pinching. April 1 spirits my tricky bone. June 6 means D-Day. August 26 fills me with panic as to how to remember my finicky sister's birthday.
Dates bring joy; dates bring pain. August 12 flips on the video that replays the tense, sad, tender day my dad left the earth and the confusing days that followed.
We can't take away other people's dates or the way they choose to honor, disregard, or suffer. Date markers may be as important as the substance that makes them so.
But how I wish I could ease the pain of certain days. The day my daughter's world fell apart is looming. She dreads the day and like an imagined monster it grows meaner, uglier, as it nears. The circumstances building up to that day are like the snow that falls before an avalanche. On that day, she expects to be buried under sliding ice and snow.
I will be on alert and there to dig her out.
Yet, I am resisting its pull into making it my day too. Resisting its pull to commemorate something I wish to forget. I am fighting the force of an avalanche.
Able to predict an avalanche, I can help prepare her through it. Her birthday follows twenty days later, but we will birthday gift her the night before. Her birthday gift will be a distraction. She'll need to set it up, read deeply the instructions, and play with her gift.
Avalanche day is a Friday. I can offer to watch the children, bake a cake; should I send flowers? Flowers of condolence or flowers of celebration?
~~
In the spring, as my friend Karen readied to move, we decided to commemorate our friendship on a last walk together. We drove to the woods and hiked upward to a trail that would end in waterfall.
Along the way, we came upon unexpected terrain: the remnants and destruction of an avalanche. Though the winter snow had long ago melted, the path of runaway snow held to the mountain. In the patches that had cleared, trees lay bended to the ground; but they'd survived, and they were slowly uprighting themselves. The avalanche of snow had bended them by force, but it hadn't severed the limbs from their trunks, nor the trunks from their roots.
Clearly, one can survive an avalanche.
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