My friend sent me a photo of the fire at the Columbia River. This is near where my daughter and granddaughter live, and it is a horrifying image. Fire haunts us here in the west. We never feel safe from it, but especially not at this time of year. Today is my birthday and I'm old enough to have learned to coexist with fear, but not to conquer it. I've been evacuated at both my current house, my last house and my cabin. You let go of everything; for in a moment it may not matter. And people in the east right now are experiencing that fear from the wet, not the fire, with flooding and predictions and projections and maps. Where will the storm go? What will happen?
We all know in our bones change is just around the corner, across the street, or in the house where we live. We shore up our families and friends as buffer against the arbitrariness of life, and random cruelty, the senseless violence, and yet we feel in our hearts nothing is secure. Maybe our belief in surviving, whatever the cost, for some of us, but we don't really know until we're tested. The fire next time, the flood, the earthquake, the storm. Live now and treasure this moment.
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