Scenes from a year. To stand around a piano, feeling life throb beneath your fingers. To be stranded on a faraway beach, to see throbbing ocean breathing like a harpsicord. To lie on an ocean of grass. Summer clouds. Long bike rides. Visits to Palatine, IL. Swings in the park. Unexplainable melancholy? Stories started, finished, abandoned, forgotten. Camping trips. Mom roasting marshmallows over a citronella candle and laughing at herself. Theological spiels. Growing up late night panics. More theological spiels. Puzzles put together, glued and put up to be forgotten in David’s room. The first day of school; the last day of school?

            Play that sweet sad song again. Sit in a rotting crabapple tree and pray on Saturday morning. Donuts and coffee and the sweetness of Daddyo coming home. Fighting, crying, storming off on my bike. Coming home struggling but surviving inside. Not running away from God. Take a water bottle to sleep when your throat gets dry.

            Watch eagerly for the first snow. Sit on the October radiators, as comfortable to the rear end as a kitten. See kids in Halloween costumes and gorge yourself on Snickers bars from Dollar General. Don’t be afraid of the bad rainy days in the mixture of good days. Come home to your soul at Christmas and sing carols. All a slice of life, of a world yet to come. LIVE!