Because I Could
I reached over to touch her hand, because I could.
Because she was there, and I was there, and the sun was streaming in through the windshield.
Because we'd woken up today, and despite sleeping an hour later than we'd meant to, we were alive and there was a pot of good, strong coffee waiting for us in the kitchen.
Because anyone who has lost someone, which is to say nearly everyone, knows that no day is promised to us.
Because a week from now the spring equinox will turn us even more towards light and sometimes it feels like a quiet revolution to even dare to hope when so much remains broken.
Because last night my grown daughter and I sat at the kitchen table long after we'd finished eating, and I quietly marveled at how much more she knows at 18 than I did at even twice that age about relationships and herself.
Because there is so much waiting right now, waiting for the vaccine, waiting for news that's not mine to share, waiting to see how everything changes or doesn't change, waiting to see what happens next which is always the case really.
Because I'd rather be overly demonstrative than sparing when it comes to love. Because birth and death are a blink apart.
Because time feels impossibly strange and it's easy to miss what's right here in front of you.
Because it's also easy not to, but it means opening your eyes and daring, too, to open your heart no matter how tender, no matter how tenuous, no matter how tentative.
Because I've surrendered to being this person who is unafraid to be sentimental, and that sentimentality is far from airy-fairy or touchy-feely. It's solid and true and rooted and resilient.
As I write these words, I look up and see tree bark on the other side of glass; I see oranges with their thick skin and avocados and coffee mugs and houseplants and newspaper clippings and silver rings. The objects of life.
I take a breath. I always do that, pause, take a breath. Exhale. Feel the insides of my body calibrating to what's here, separating self from world, inner and outer landscapes coexisting.
This morning in the car, my left hand on the wheel, I reached over and took her hand in mine. I did it because I could.
Because we are here. Alive and together.