Illuminated

It’s funny how easy it is to forget our stories—to get so lost in the bigness of everything that we lose the particulars. I love details. Often, when Chinua is telling a story, I interrupt him to ask for details. “What color was it? Where were you? What song were you playing?” He finds it puzzling, absorbed in the narrative and rhythm of story telling, the cadence and punchline interrupted by requests for details. But I live in my senses, so details are everything to me.

Here are some:

It is so cold when I wake up that my hands get numb while I type and I have to take moments to warm them under my arms. 

Yesterday I insisted on taking forty photographs of my friend, Sonal, and she didn’t understand why, but when she saw the photographs, she got it.

I get a little thrill every time I am driving somewhere and see my dad walking through our town. It’s real. My parents are here! 

Today is the Leafy boy’s birthday. He is fourteen years old, the same height as Kenya, and this past year has been very good to him. 

The other night we had family night, minus Chinua, who had been called away by a men’s night. My parents came over and we ate aloo tamatar curry and dal and watched The Princess Diaries together, which has enough zingy lines that we were all laughing. (Although I did say sarcastically at one point, “Oh see, curly, unruly hair is apparently unprincesslike, while straight shiny hair is acceptable.” Gotta point out these fallacies where we see them… my princes and princesses will never have shiny smooth hair, and I certainly never have.)

There is such happiness in being together and laughing. Leafy made popcorn, Kai was home with us, and these are the good days, with Mom and Dad here and the family all around. I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately— tossing and turning with worry about money, or time, or any number of things— and when I am awake at night I imagine floating, completely surrounded by God, and maybe there is the scent of roses in the air, or maybe light illuminating a huge field of grass, stalk by stalk, or maybe it is something like my own bed and blankets, and I eventually drift back to sleep.

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