Why does it make me so happy that a young boy is choosing to spend just 10 minutes out of his day to read aloud to me?
Why does it bring me joy to connect a 16 year old with a mentor who can explain math concepts clearly to him, in a way that click for him?
Why are quiet moments on the couch with the head of someone you care about resting on your shoulder indescribably beautiful in their simplicity?
Why do I keep thinking over and over again of the friend whose company I love because she listens, she sees me, she cares enough about my life to feel frustrated when I am not on my path?
These questions are bouncing between my head and my heart as I sit and smoke a cigarette on my couch under the decorative twinkle lights, after a busy week. Professionally and socially, it was a week full of positive stress, connection, and deepening. As I reflect on the week, I notice that a handful of joys stick out to me, and they aren’t the joys I suppose I would expect to be most memorable.
The transcript from the phone call that was the highlight of my week is as follows (more or less):
Keandre (16 year old) calls me and says, “are you busy?”
I say, “no, just babysitting.”
“Oh, well, we just finished, and it helped so much. The way my new tutor explained it made it all make sense. It felt like it wasn’t some old guy I couldn’t understand, but someone like, you know, I could talk to. It was supposed to take an hour, but it took thirty minutes.”
“That’s wonderful. I am so glad that you found a tutor who can explain these things to you.”
Keandre: “Me too.”
“If you take the ACT, this will help you so much, and if you decide to go into the Air Force, these skills will come in handy too. Listen. I am proud of you. Not every teenager would be responsible and driven enough to log on at 7 pm on a Friday night to go to tutoring that I set up for them. You’re amazing.”
“Thanks, well, I want to give it a try.”
“OK, I’ll let you enjoy the rest of your night. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
And like that, my heart is full. He understands a concept more now than he did 40 minutes ago. Wow. That fills me with a cocktail of hope, gratitude, and pride. Significance, too. I feel significant, like my life matters, because I helped Keandre access clarity; I helped him find the person who said the words that opened the door to new knowledge for him.
What could be more beautiful than that? What could stave off the darkness as effectively as holding this moment, this phone call, near and dear?
It makes me feel good. I am grateful to be a cog in this machine of Big Love, and these are the moments from the week that stick out to my mind and heart as I reflect on a Friday night because these are the radiant happenings that refuse to be pushed aside by the difficulties that are also ongoing.
I’m worried about a friend with addictive tendencies, who is experimenting with illicit drugs. I’m holding a student with severe anxiety in my heart. I am remembering the friends and family members who are ill, scarred, or struggling. I am wrestling with my own chronic health problems.
I am taking my husband off of my accounts, in hopes that this will allow us both to move forward. Forward and away from each other. Which is a colossal grief.
This grief is weighing heavy on me. It feels like walking through a vat of honey. Emotionally. I’m in a desert full of mirages which, from a distance, tell me things can be repaired between us, but when I arrive at the edge of the mirage, I am left surrounded by the desert’s eerie emptiness. The cruel trick reels me in time and again, I fall for it. I fall, I fall, I fall into the sand, bury my face. Breath in deeply. Suffocate.
And that’s why the joy of the phone call with Keandre is poignant.
That’s why the boy who chooses to practice his reading skills with me every day is precious to me.
That’s why feeling the head of a loved one resting on my shoulder is sweet.
That’s why a friend who listens, helps out, sees me, is a treasure that makes me smile every day.
The darkness illuminates just how essential the moments of light are. Quirky, tender things seem to give me the courage to face the pain, to call the bank and change that account information, to do the hard things I need to do to be more free, more alive, more myself.
It is Friday night. I am exhausted, I am grateful, I am on my path. I will count my joys here.
heartbeatnomad 