Monday, January 21, 2008

Landmark Moments

They say that there are 5-7 landmark moments in life. Each of us can recite them without thinking. They are moments that became the catalyst for a different life direction. Sometimes we created those moments by choice, sometimes they just happened.

My first one was the day I realized "this day, date and time will never happen again." I was 10 years old and messing around in the backyard, digging up the terrain around a huge pile of red ants who were gathered around some food thing on the concrete pad at the bottom of the drain spout. I always did my deepest thinking out in the yard. Looking at the sky, listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, digging, climbing the rocks or just walking around.

The second landmark was my dad passing away. The third was going away to college. The fourth was the birth of my daughter and the fifth, the birth of my son. Those were the cruising years - 27 years of doing the work of living and working and playing and sleeping. The sixth landmark was the cancer illness of my mother. That caused change in many directions, on many levels.

Friday may have been a new landmark moment. Pulling off the highway after the 9 hour trek with Nemo in his bed in the front seat and my things - all the important things that I could fit in the car and not taking so many other important things because it would hurt someone if they were gone - was like suddenly being part of the snap of a rubber band. I could literally feel it in my stomach, in my head, in the music and in the universe. I passed through the threshold of something I can't identify yet.

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