I want to write of gratitude of how this year hasn’t been so bad how there’s so much good that’s come out of the bad and how I’ve learned so much and grown and found my way clear to living in this moment but the darkness outside my window seems to linger and I feel myself falling into its cloying embrace hoping it might hold me just a little bit longer all the while hoping it will let me go find my way out of the darkness. And my shoulders slump and my body grows tired of waiting for the morning light. I lean back into my chair close my eyes and try to take a deep breath but it’s not very deep this morning breath filled with the weary and worry of these times that seem to grow heavier with every news report I read. And as I sit with eyes closed I hear my Auntie Maggie’s voice who at 90 lives alone in the city in southern India where she and my mother were born. She hasn’t been out of her house since March her only contact with ‘the outside world’ her two servants who come daily and a neighbour who visits regularly and her What’sApp calls where she sometimes laughs and sometimes cries and always sings me a song from her childhood when she and my mother and all their siblings lived together in what they called their own private Shangri-la. Your mama loved to sing, she says And I remember and hear her sweet voice singing her favourite Christmas song, “Il est né le divin enfant Jouez hautbois, résonnez musettes” And I smile and open my eyes and see that in those few moments while I sat with eyes closed and spirits flagging the sun has broken through the darkness and streaked the sky with rosy hues that glow and pulse across the horizon in undulating waves of violet and pink and tiffany blue and the trees are dressed in cloaks of rose-brushed gold and the river flows deep in the morning glory of dawn breaking free of night. I want to write of gratitude and find myself here in this moment falling breathlessly into the beauty of light bursting through the cracks. I want to write of gratitude but words escape me as I breathe into the grace that arrives with every breath when I let go of what I want of what I miss or regret or yearn for and let this prayer of two simple words be all that I can say. Thank You.
Two Simple Words
22