Behind the moment

[cahandel]

I wrote this for a blog, so it is written a little more impersonally than I would have written to a family member, but the sentiment remains the same. I cherish this moment as is unfolds.

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Isn't it weird how sometimes, you feel like you're just behind the moment, chasing it? As much as I tried yesterday, I kept feeling that everything was happening, and I was merely following it along, always a moment too late to feel it. It was an exhausting chase.

This was my experience up until the moment when newly inaugurated President Barack Obama said, "Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life." Exactly then, history caught up with me. The moment unfurled, and I was in it. In their manual labor, our predecessors shaped their raw hopes, blood mixing with clay, all this for a particular outcome. This moment, today.

My parents visited for the winter holidays this past year. On one beautiful, and very cold afternoon, I had coffee with my Mom. As we sat in a corner of a warm little cafe, her heart opened up and unclenched the crumpled pages of her life story. She held this story close for many years, perhaps out of fear of the consequence of its telling. Hers was a life of toil, raw hands, sometimes bloated with the thick liquid of life and dirty dishwater. One of nine children, her father built furnaces, and her mother, who loathed all domestic engagements, dreamed of becoming doctor when most women didn't finish elementary school. It would forever remain a dream to her.

Across the decades of her life, my Mom spent hours in the basement of our home, meticulously cleaning and ironing our clothes. Dinner preparation began daily at noon. When we returned home from school, we felt the elusive nature of leisure. The newspapers needed to be delivered, potatoes needed to be peeled, homework needed to be done. Chores lingered.

We didn't sit until we convened at the dinner table every evening as a family. Between these small incidental moments my mother derived her life, and here, also, slept her dreams.

When I entered high school, my Mom announced that she would go to college. She had already sent 11 of her children to universities across America, and now that her last three were relatively self-sufficient, it seemed her time had arrived, or that, perhaps, it was a coincidence of opportunity.

Incredibly, she contracted a serious immune disorder shortly after matriculating. She completed her homework in her bed as we cooked dinner downstairs and brought it up to her. I thought she was dying; I had no idea why she couldn't move, and suspected she wasn't being honest with me about the seriousness of her condition. What I think actually happened was that her prescribed life suddenly coincided with the present moment and became incompatible. Her prescribed life died an agonizing death, as her fearful body desperately tried to hold it tighter. Over two years, she rebuilt her immune system. Much like the caterpillar and butterfly, she emerged from her bed, transformed, and with renewed energy to put her chosen degree to use. Hope prevailed. She began to actively script her life.

I compare my life with this. How easy it is to buy a new pair of pants for Sam instead of patching old ones -- how disposable commodities have become in my generation. A squandering of values has occurred. I feel the urge to enter a confessional, or take a bath to scrub off the guilt. And yet, I realize this would do nothing. It would still be a life in reverse, my back turned towards the present moment, swallowed by the black abyss of regret. I cannot revise my own history, but I can certainly be deliberate in this moment now.

History caught up with me yesterday. "For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," President Obama said. Reflecting briefly on the struggles of all previous generations in our respective family histories, we can shape our future in this moment. "This is the source of our confidence — the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny." That uncertain destiny which lies dormant within me, the dreams and aspirations, the hopes that I've protected and clenched tightly to my chest. If I unclench and let the moment in, what might happen? Hope might happen. Hope and presence are the liberators of dreams. And if, in this moment, I have hope, my dreams become possible.

"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed — why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

To inaugurate is to begin. To begin, I must be present in this moment. To be present, I must hold hope for an outcome. In this moment, if I stand with it, instead of behind it, anything seems possible.

[KAWtalk]

Chris, your post is anything but silly, but it flows with family love! Thank you for bringing me the "present" of this "present" moment.