Can't You Hear It?



Can't You Hear It?

 Can you feel it? There is change in the air. Stop for just a moment and listen. Do you hear it? It is the slow ticking of time as the world around us changes. It is so subtle that you do not even realize it until it is too late. You look up and the hand has turned.

Yesterday I was a child running freely through the hills where I was raised. Today? Today those hills are just a distant memory.

Today I am no longer a child. Today I am far removed from those carefree days. Today I am just tired. Today I want to stop and enjoy the life that I know is out there.

The problem is that life is just like the merry-go-round that we used to play on as children. At first you spend all of your energy trying to get it to go faster and faster and faster and before you know it, you have succeeded. That is the exciting and the scary part of life. We lean back as the forces pull us outward and we feel our grips tighten trying desperately to hang on. Everything around us is just a blur, shapes and images come together as unrecognizable images. We drown out the voices telling us to not go so fast and now we are desparately hanging on for dear life just wondering if we will lose our grip and be slung aside or if we will just have to endure until of it's own accord the merry-go-round slows back down to the point that things are no longer blurred and it is just a slow peaceful ride.

Today I am just tired. The day is fading and I find myself looking for a quiet place. The quiet however is drowned out by the constant ticking that I hear. Maybe it is only in my mind, but I can hear it, very steady, tick      tick      tick      tick      tick................ Can't you hear it? 

Lost Treasures



Lost Treasure

  The text simply said "Well the  Bride and Groom have been broken beyond repair."

Sadly, I knew immediately what that meant. The bride and groom in question were a simple little inexpensive Lefton cake topper that my wife's grandmother had given her before we got married  nearly thirty years ago. Throughout our entire marriage that little piece has sat in a number of places in our home, but always somewhere that my wife could enjoy the simple beauty of it. It's most recent perch has been in a small little display that she had sitting by her favorite perch in the living room. It was nestled away in small metal tin that resembled a gazebo with colored windows surrounding it.

This little figurine had been a part of our lives for a long time. I would like to say that it was in mint condition, but the truth is that it had been broken once before. That time, it was dropped and it was just a small issue. The groom simply broke in half, but with the help of a little glue and a black sharpie, you would never have known. This time, I could tell from the tone of my wife's text that it wasn't quite that simple this time. I was away at work so I simply told her to "gather up the pieces".

Her next text reminded me that her Grandma had given it to her and I knew immediately that the hurt would run much deeper than first thought. You see, my wife lost her Father last March. He had been ill for a while and their relationship had been strained for a long time, but that is a post for another day. That death preceded the death of her Grandma by about six weeks. She has really struggled with those two deaths more than I was expecting and more than I think that she was expecting. So the sudden loss of a simple treasure suddenly had so much more meaning. It was no longer about the figurine, it was about lost treasures that can never be recovered or restored. It was about death and the loss of loved ones. It was about life and the brevity of it. It was about when things are broken beyond repair no matter how much we would like to fix them. Simply put, it was about life.

My wife calls me a plodder. I really am not sure if she is saying this in a good or a bad way, but I guess that it really does not matter. There are few peaks and valleys for me, mostly I just plod along dealing with the issues of life as I come across them. So in that same manner, when I arrived home that night about 10:30, I asked her where the pieces were. She teared up a little bit and shook a small cardboard box and I could tell that her text was probably correct. She handed the box over to me and I poured them out on the table and I began to study them as she went to her favorite spot and settled in to play a game of spider to help her wash away the day.



Restored Bride & Groom



I slowly and methodically picked up each and every piece examining it very closely. Then I went and got some super glue and I began to very carefully place the pieces back together like some type of cruel jigsaw puzzle. Small pieces suddenly became larger pieces and larger pieces became larger yet. Then as if by some will of it's own, the figurine suddenly looked like the Bride and Groom all over again. I walked into the living room and handed it to her and you would have thought that I had given her the moon. Gone was the sadness that had filled her face and voice since early in the day. Gone was that despair that had settled over her like a cloud. In it's place was a beaming smile and giggles.

I have always figured myself as a fixer. When things were broken, I fix them. That is just part of the plodder nature. Unfortunately there are a limited number of things in this life that I can fix. Even the things that I do fix, if you look closely, you will see the cracks that tell you that I was there. I can't make things like they were before but sometimes, like with this simple little inexpensive treasure, I can restore it to the point that the cracks fade away and the smile and the memories return.

GW