Sunday Edition: What a wonder....

... May I tell you?

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
		~ Mary Oliver

My phone, so smart, lets me move random photos into designated albums, which I seldom do because 1) so many pics and 2) I’m by nature a disorganized type.

With one exception: photos of Tom.

For these past two years I’ve been dragging Tom into his own album. And the process – so many photos, so many moments, so many people and places, so many memories – continues to be a sweet and bittersweet enterprise.

It’s slow, emotional, tender, fun, wondrous: The new puppy, the new grand baby, the new neighbors.

And: That quick trip to see the daughter when she was working in LA, the Museum in Baltimore when we visited his mother, and Wait? What? Goats in trees? 

The majority, though? 

Tom, gazing upward in astonishment.

In 90% of these photos, there’s Tom, looking up, enchanted, rapt, gazing– at a bird, a moon, a pyramid, a mosques’ ornate mosaic ceiling, a Rocky mountain peak, fireworks over the valley beneath said peak, a steeple in Bethlehem, a bluebird on the backyard feeder, the Sphinx, a cathedral in Antigua, sails on big boats in the local marina, the hilltops of Santorini, countless pelicans over Hunting Island, the swing bridge over the Intracoastal, goats in trees in Morocco, a giant Jesus monument in Havana, a sunset over the Sahara, a new moon over Beaufort, giraffes anywhere, art everywhere, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks in our yard, Blue Angels rehearsing for an air show, the great egrets perched on the neighbor’s dock, the woodstorks over the marsh, the geese, the hawk, the eagle, the cardinals, the hummingbirds, the spoonbills so elegant and resplendent and roseate. Oh, the spoonbills.

Sometimes he’s not looking up – sometimes he’s admiring a new book or a beloved old one, the mysterious bleached driftwood, a fresh peach, a raw oyster with a glass of champagne, the abandoned prehistoric shell of a horseshoe crab, a friend’s new boat, another friend’s old dog, the neighbor’s garden, a big breakfast, a fresh-dipped ice-cream cone, an old friend, his remarkable children.

It is astonishing.

I am astonished. 

This world, so full of beauty and broken things; enchanted, endangered, flowing and flying and ancient and new and so unspeakably wondrous.

He taught me this; he gave me this. I want to tell him, I want to tell you: Language is inadequate but this world, this life, this is astonishing.

All of it. These images and memories and emotions, these enduring gifts wash over me and I’m left soaked in gratitude, in wonder. Astonished.

He paid attention, as the poet urged.

And we were – and are – astonished.

I just wanted to take a moment, and tell you about it.

And I hope, sometime today, in all the ordinary and mundane and hard stuff, you’ll look up, or around, or in the mirror maybe, and take a deep breath and allow yourself a moment of raw astonished wonder.

This – all of this – is wonder, or a razor-thin slice, anyway. Can we ever comprehend the immensity, the vast eternal dizzying enormity of it?

Two years and one day later, the gift still dazzles, the grief softens, the wonder grows.

What to do with all this? All this unspeakable grace? This unbearable gratitude?

Today, I tell about it.

And I feed the birds.