From a few weeks ago:
Today was the first day of visitation with my daughter
since the flooding in my apartment, and my attention was constantly on what was
or was not the same once we got home. I
must’ve done a good job putting things back to rights because Roo’s focus was
on insisting we had to have carrots with our hot dogs (and I had planned ham…
but it’s not up to me now, I guess). All
she lost in the catastrophe were a few coloring books and some clothes which
were too small for her anyway.
After dinner and a shower, we watched Life of Pi. I’m not sure I would’ve chosen it as a kid’s
movie, but she’d seen it already and it was rated PG, so I stuck it in and readied
some popcorn. While munching cookies
(again, the snack apparently wasn’t up to me) and watching the movie, she was
mesmerized and very caught up in telling me the story of a boy and a tiger who
had been shipwrecked together for over 200 days. It’s a good story, and she was very ready for
bed when it was done.
As frequently happens after communing with Becca, I am
left listening to her bedtime CD and thinking.
I noticed when I came into my computer room for the first time in a
while that the decorations have a tiger theme.
A while ago, her dad had gotten some animal art projects for her, and
two ended up on the walls in here. Both
are stripey and orange to match the tiger mouse pad I happened to have. All by accident, but my room is decorated with
the image of the boy’s companion, Richard Parker. It seems the tiger was named Percy and the
man who sold him to a zoo was named Richard Parker, but the paperwork got them
backwards, so the tiger had a rather long name.
As I stare into the Crayola-yellow eyes of the largest
tiger, I wonder as young Pi did about what is really lost when the things you
care about disappear under water. You
strike a balance with the things in life that you are afraid of: failure,
homelessness, anger, the floundering you must do. You come back to a state of normal, and you
realize that the very thing you were struggling against is the thing that kept
you focused and alive through the worst of it.
For a moment, you miss it, because the crappy, first world problems come
back into view, and you struggle not to lose the lessons that you learned in
your pensive moments, floating along on your life raft.
Ever since mid-August when I took on searching for this
new job, everything has been in an uneasy truce. Some days, I am tied to the raft, crying,
yelling for God to let the tiger take me.
Tonight, the tiger stares out at the beauty of the water, and I find
myself doing the same. The danger is
gone, though tomorrow will bring another day of fishing. But for now, I enjoy tonight. I listen to the music and watch my daughter
sleep, not caring what I have to do tomorrow.
I look out at the snow softly falling and with nowhere to go tomorrow I
can enjoy its beauty. Pi was right. In these moments of peace, you see the beast
has a soul. You see God. You realize that life is a beautiful gift,
and the travails only make the good times that much more precious.
Bandit is staring at me, and all I can think of is how
lucky I am that he wasn’t here when the water came. I am finally surrounded by my household
again. There is nothing more to say…
except thank you.
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