One Room Away

I’m outlining a pink bunny in red embroidery thread.  It’s part of a quilt top I started making for my niece when she was born.  A year ago.  I hope it doesn’t become her wedding present.  

One room away, Predator vs. Alien is on the TV, and the rest of my household is discussing saliva made out of acid.

Seasons are changing.  In this one, I can no longer count on everyone being at the dinner table and day trips are catch as catch can.  We have work and workouts, band and birthday parties, and school is just around the corner.  Graduation dates are creeping onto real-life calendars and you can’t help but wish you could freeze time.  

But, the time you do have is, well…interesting.  

You eat together, watch highlights of the latest kickboxing video, and get fruit stickers on your arm from the boy eating an apple next to you.  You tickle their backs when they lay on your lap, but they don’t want to sew and you sure don’t want to watch what’s on TV.  

So, you enjoy their presence from a room away, and you think about…

Yesterday’s conversations, the passage of time, and daily tragedies that we survive, but cannot fix - all while trying to make sure your tears don’t fall on your sewing project because water makes the pattern disappear.  

Sometimes, you just plain stumble on a metaphor.

My mind became a gathering place for the people on my heart.  They didn’t seem to mind that they’d never met and the furniture was old.    

A friend suffered another stroke.  Mom is too young for a nursing home.  An aging child cares for an aging parent, both wondering if they can survive the arrangement.  An elderly widower has plenty of money, but no companion nor ability to drive.  No, he’s never heard of Uber.  Who is he?

I feel the weight of each one more than I care to.  Maybe.  But, especially because discomfort always gives way to hunting solutions, and I can’t find any.  It seems I am close enough to feel their pain, but too far away to offer any real comfort.  

Maybe it would be different if you weren’t just one person in one place.  Maybe there is no such thing as lasting comfort.  Maybe comfort only exists when it is fresh and given again and again and again.  And maybe it just feels better to write it all out, and hope that what you’ve written can comfort someone other than yourself. 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Cor:3-4