These are no magic numbers. I will wake up in the morning as every other day, inhale and pull the covers back. I will step from my bed and feel the soft, warm carpet on my naked feet. The sun will be somewhere overhead and the birches in my front lawn will still touch the sky. The snow may have melted and the mail might be late, but it will still be a day on this earth.
And yet as the second hand sweeps across the face of time, it hammers into my head the fact that my life is quickly changing, moving, shifting, disappearing like a child’s breath on a cold morning. We lounge around the living room in our pajamas, mussed hair and spent wrapping paper, each one a bit wiser, a bit older, a bit more sore and a bit more foolish. We laugh and play and forget about the first eleven months of the year, bewitched by woodsmoke and frying bacon until all at once we catch a glimpse of something we hadn’t seen or had simply ignored before.
With a laugh, a twinkle, a nod of the head or a raised coffee cup the soul surfaces and like a pleasant aroma we draw it in deeply and close our eyes, wishing it would last forever, knowing it will soon be gone, making a memory for the dark days, the Mondays, the frightening days, the days we forget the truth. But for now the eyes are open and the laughter abides.
