It’s that time of year again.

 

It’s that time of year again. The leaves have fallen into the delicious childhood memory of rustling and crisp mountains piled so high that you just had to jump into them. Leaves that are offered up to the Gods of Fire and Winter.

Nights in Massachusetts were long, dark and cold. I remember walking back from my friend’s house, past all those houses whose lights made the falling snow dance on its way down to the white blanket that squeaked beneath my feet as I trudged home.

I remember that time; the cold nips of snowflakes on my nose and cheeks, my breath exploding in puffs of steam, the distant headlights of a car piercing the woods, the soft sound of steel chains. I liked walking home at that time. I felt at one with the world.

I wondered about the lives in ‘those houses,’ how much like mine, how different. I would imagine them having everything I wanted plus what already I had and I’d walk steadily through the crunching snow with every hope and dream keeping me company. Everything was possible. Hope made all the difficulties of my youth seem manageable.

I look back on that and my hope has stayed with me. It has drawn me forward in my yearning, my seeking. It has picked me up when I thought I was all the way down. It has brought me a life full of learning, rich, succulent, and fullfilling and I am the richer for it.

This is our moment. There is no other. The remembered moment is only an echo heard through our desire and need.

This is our moment. Here, now as I write this. This is my life, right here, right now. This is my mantra. When I can remember this, everything else becomes insignificant and I only want to know this moment, and the next and the next, never lifting my eyes to an imagined horizon, but being here, on my own horizon.

In this moment, I wish all of us a healthy New Year and the blessing to realize that the death of this year is here for a reason…so that we may experience our love and oneness with each other.

A boy making his way home through night snow will always know that.

　

Pmg.