Poignancy

I turn 39 in a month and yet I still remember very clearly the day my classmates and I knew for sure we were going to graduate from high school. Our senior year was nothing short of challenging, rigorous and heartbreaking. But that is a whole other story.  Presently at 38, my youngest son Morgan, who is 11, is bigger than me. Garret now sleeps in his own bed. Although time is of a different form in our life, there are poignant points of contact between the "normal" world and ours. As my boys and I walk around our school for their daily exercise, the comings and goings of our students their age are accompanied by wistful thoughts that I’ve come to embrace. “Garret would have been Grade 8 now. Morgan in 5^th grade.” I find myself going back and forth in time.

During these moments of poignancy, questions come one after another. "Where am I in all this?" "Who am I?" "What is my purpose in this life?"

My meditation practice certainly grounds me in these times. I go back to the breath and sit with my warring mind. It always sounds so simple. But those in the practice know that nothing could be further from the truth. Somehow I know already how it all ends. But in the meantime, there is the transition. There are the numerous in-between transformations, the painful transmutations to reveal and heal one’s wounds.  Some might even say the end is not important. Perhaps they are right.

Time has wings. I am no longer on the cusp of high school graduation. Yet I flit here and there thinking about the future, revisiting what could have been amidst the present life I am living in. My boys continue to grow bigger. In a month I will turn a year older. 39. What does it all mean? What will this age, this year, this life mean? I clearly do not have answers. But I remember the words a friend said to me yesterday-- "Time has wings." The words quieted the usual ramblings of my thoughts only to generate a whole new series of ponderings. But in between such series, I find myself asking perhaps the most important question of all, “What am I grateful for today?”

I would like to believe that when all is said and done, it all ends in gratitude. And when this happens, then love will have prevailed. In the meantime, as time does, I land, fly and soar moment by moment, breath by breath, realizing that each one is a cusp in itself.