Cardiff Bay. In the dark, with the noise of howling wind and spitting seas at your back you stumble and fall face first on a braided rug of stones. Ah, well, lass. Rest awhile. No one will mind if you have a wee nap. There is time enough for repair when you wake.
While visiting the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff, Wales last summer with friends, we passed this lovely woman. I wondered about her, she looked so peaceful where she was. Whoever she was, she looks the perfect object for this week’s photo challenge.
This morning I thought my death might be imminent. I hadn’t finished my first cup of coffee yet when the carbon monoxide alarm started beeping. I called my husband at work. He didn’t seem too worried, and said he’d come home at lunch. “If I’m dead by the time you get here, you’ll know why,” I told him.
I poured another cup of coffee and turned to the internet. Then I called my husband back and told him, never mind. By then, we’d both figured out that the intermittent beeping meant that the device itself was dying (not me!). So I ordered a new alarm.
There is nothing that lifts your day so quickly as to think you might be close to death one minute, and discover in the next that, nope. Not today.
And nothing says juxtaposition like the stones that mark a passing as they stand in witness to the life that carries on.
You can check out the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge here.
January 20, 1989, roughly 10:30 am. Picture me sitting in a room, utterly slobberknocked. My husband has just kissed me on the forehead and gone off to “get some sleep” he said. Get some sleep? What about me? I’ve been awake for twenty-six hours and this is all I get?
Actually, what I got was a 5 pound, 14 ounce package of energy and sweetness that would change my life forever.
The Boy arrived at 10:14 am. I remember seeing his little face for the first time–his eyes wide open, looking right at me. I was shocked by the intensity. A few minutes later a nurse whisked him away, my husband left, and I was alone in an empty room with all this discarded equipment, feeling like I’d just played ten hours of pro football.
Best day of my life.
Fast forward twenty-five years. Zip past the infancy, the toddler-hood, the childhood that flowed into early adolescence without a hiccup. The teen years, years of homeschooling, learning to drive, part-time jobs. Then college, then a first real job. You could pack it all into a two-hour movie. Piece of cake.
Last week my husband and I attended an open house at the place where the Boy works. Throughout the evening, several of his co-workers, including his bosses, took the time to tell us how much they thought of him, how creative he was, what a nice guy he was. All very gratifying, as well as reassuring in today’s job market. Exactly what every parent hopes to hear. At one point, the founder of the company jokingly asked me what I had fed him for breakfast, as though how the Boy turned out had anything to do with me.
And that’s the point. Beyond the love we offered unconditionally, beyond the boundaries we set (and constantly negotiated), who the Boy is now has more to do with who he was when he arrived: eyes wide open, curious, imaginative, tenacious, persistent, and with a sense of humor. He loved music and words and laughing, right from the start.
And we are the better for him, his father and I. He has taught us far more than we ever thought possible to learn.
His bags are packed, he’s leaving for Africa, wearing all his cool clothes.
The music that inspired a wish to go to Africa in the photo above.
*NOTE: I didn’t really. It’s a metaphor. The Super Bowl took place two days later. The 49ers won. But there was much rejoicing in our house, all the same.
I like these weekly photo challenges. They’re quick, I can get on and get off, and still feel like I’m not spending quite so much time on the internet. Plus, they give me a new way of looking at a word. Today’s word is family. A word, which for me, is sometimes so fraught with drama I want to run away and hide, or talk some kind person into adopting me. And yet, I know that my family of origin loves me no matter what, as I do them.
But family is such an expansive word, and when I read the challenge I thought of this photo, taken at least a decade ago. Because sometimes family is also a word for the friends who will get up before dawn and ride an hour-and-a-half just to stand beside you to watch the sun rise over Walden Pond.
Highclere Castle in Hampshire, UK. Fellow Downton Abbey fans will recognize it as home to the fictional Crawley family and their gaggle of servants. I was taken with the breadth of all those windows, lined row upon row like mute sentinels — letting in light, while repelling the elements; offering up views of the world outside, while keeping the viewer out of sight.
What I’d really like to know is, who’s responsible for cleaning them?
Cardiff Bay.
A Wilderness of Words 