In between

In conversation with a close friend on the other side of the country yesterday, I was reminded that transition is rarely -- if ever -- enjoyable. "In between" is somewhere most of us don't want to be, given the choice. By definition, it's not even a place we're willing to acknowledge; it's just where we happen to be until we get there. Wherever "there" is from our current perspective.

Another close friend recently pointed out in an email that "in-between-ness is part of the identity of God's people". How I wish it weren't so; how I wish, as I did when I was a child, that I could simply close my eyes, think of where I wanted to be, and be there.


I'm still too raw to process my current season of transition, but this post from my archives will do for now.

Not seeing is believing

I wrote recently of an event where many young lives ended together, violently and unexpectedly.

This past Christmas Day, a family in my friend's community in Thailand lost its son, husband, father when the effects of a motorbike accident proved beyond recovery.

In May, the day after sustaining my fifth concussion in six years, I attended a movement workshop facilitated by a warm, bubbly woman who spoke gladly of her young sons (it seems there were a couple of us whose rough-and-tumble approach to contact improv brought preteen boys to mind. Hmm.) and her walk with our Creator. I learnt not long after that she had died suddenly: one moment she was back from school run, saying she didn't feel quite right; the next, this physically fit 48-year-old was gone.

I just learnt that my former undergraduate classmate recently suffered a third miscarriage just before Christmas.

I grieved when I heard about each of these. I grieve still. Loss is something that can never be completely reconciled in this life. I grieve for families standing in this instant void that requires a whole new way of living. I grieve for sons and daughters made aware that they must guard memories of the departed parent well if they want them to remain, because no more will ever be added. I grieve for spouses who found a good thing and had it taken away. I grieve for dreams of parenthood that seem too elusive to attain.

I grieve for our sense of safety, our belief in the order and fitness of things. This is the way I am; I don't need to take on others' pain. Simply by virtue of being who I am, I already feel it. I used to ask that my heart be made less tender so that I wouldn't hurt so much. Nothing changed; so I am learning instead to ask that my constantly broken heart be made a gift, and that its constant need for healing draw me closer to its beautiful Healer.

In this inevitable grief, I find myself at a point of decision.

Shall I believe that all is not in order and will never be? There is ample evidence to this effect in our clattering, limping world.

Shall I believe that beneath the cruel chaos lies a greater order that we cannot see because of our proximity? There is even greater evidence to that effect if we choose to ask the One who can see.

Faith, someone once wrote, is the conviction of things not seen.

How I ache for that conviction to be loudest as I navigate this seemingly senseless world.

When something breaks...

... that something being news, big bad news about a young man shooting his own mother and then a bunch of schoolchildren and faculty before shooting himself...

... when it is plain that news isn't the only thing breaking, that there are shattered hearts lying everywhere in town and in affected families scattered abroad, parents who may never be able to look a festive decoration in the eye again, children who've learnt in the worst possible way that the world itself is broken and sometimes that which we've taught them to believe separates the good from the bad actually doesn't...

Image by Bjarne Henning Kvaale

... when so much is broken and still breaking, do we really need media crews flocking to the scene to interview victims?

Do we really need to see in such great detail how the boys and girls are feeling right after barely surviving said attack?

Do we really need a close-up of a teacher who's had the worst schoolday ever?

What does it fulfil in us when we see the grief-twisted faces of loss, rather than simply taking note that this atrocity happened and calling on the Compassionate One to mend all the brokenness?

Why do strangers the world over need so much information? Really, why? Do we need to agree how bad something is before we'll agree it's bad?


I deliberately did not link to any of the coverage. You probably know what happened, and where would my credibility be if I linked to the very object I'm decrying?

Or

I spent weeks making a choice that truly required much less time and effort than I ended up giving it.

It renewed my awareness that I, and perhaps most other humans, do not like the concept of "Or" very much.

We prefer And.

We have a hard time making a final pronouncement because we know it will mean turning away from all other options.

In this case, it was a simple matter of when I would fly to which Southeast Asian city. That was all. But still I struggled, drafted plans, scribbled them out, started over, repeated until the dusty corner of my brain that once knew a few things about programming screamed that I should JUST BREAK THE INFINITE LOOP ALREADY.

The difficulty came from accepting that if I chose this flight, I would be in Singapore and not Australia on that day. If I chose that flight, I would be in Thailand but not Singapore or Australia. Then I saw the silliness of it all because if I wanted to concern myself with all the places I wasn't going to be at any given time, well, why stop at three? It would take me a while to think my way through a whole globe's worth of cities and countries and those little hidden corners one can only discover through getting lost.

Taken during my first week living in the granted wish

So the choices have been made, and I hope I will have learnt my lesson: a little deliberation is prudent, but often I just have to push myself off balance and see to which side of the wall I fall. Surely I know by now that whichever way I go, I will never be separated from all that's good in my life.

Maybe falling isn't the best analogy for someone as accident prone as me to use, but it seems appropriate to the context and picture.

Resolution of the moment: Think less. Fall more. But not literally, for a change.

As the light goes

Cottesloe, September 2012

Living where I do now, it's easy to watch the sun set over the horizon. I am thankful for that. I've caught some splendid views and each one leaves me thirsty for more beauty, perhaps in hopes that it will counter the ugliness I constantly meet at work. Often I find myself so spellbound that I remain long after dark, the memory of the fading light keeping me still and silent whereas I could very well be on the far side of stormy.

Over eight years ago I wrote some reflections on nightfall, on what happens as the light goes and when it's gone. A few days ago, in regard to a specific situation it seemed as though night had fallen with an audible thump. I found myself suddenly in a place I did not recognise and could not see.

I have found once again that there is nothing to fear. Fear is a choice I may opt for by default, but I can also choose to be aware that I am not alone in the dark. I know I am in constant company of the One to whom darkness is as day.

Life has felt unstable for as long as I can remember. I first came to read these ancient lines in 2006 and they have remained at the back of my mind ever since. They returned to front and centre yesterday. I had forgotten the second half of the verse; seeing it again was enough to remind me that the promise of daylight is nearly as uplifting as daybreak itself:

"God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns." (Psalm 46:5, NASB)

Crickets? Cobwebs?

I know. It's been quiet (again) around here. I just thought I'd pop in and write something so as not to give the impression that I have spent three months -- really? Three??? -- languishing in concussed grouchiness.

I have not. Indeed, as I did mention at the end of that most recent blog post, the grumpy spell ended before I'd hit "Publish".

Life is good. I found a home to rent in preparation for the cousins/house-sit hosts' return, although the process by which it was secured was so improbable that it seems more as if the home found me. Said home is so "me" in so many more ways than I could list offhand, and here I had been thinking I'd settle for anything that had a working lock. Preferably without a verbose landlord living on the same premises, but when you're desperate...

I have been learning -- and that is part of the reason for this season of blog silence -- the fine art of being blessed. To be precise, I've been learning how to stand there and let the blessing drench me, instead of bolting like a startled pony or starting to pare down what my heart desires until it more closely resembles "what I will only just live with because I think I have no choice". Learning to wait, learning that as I live in my Creator and him in me, our wills come together and what he gives me is what I always wanted.

It is a scary thing, knowing that the One who blesses knows exactly where you live. Physically and metaphorically. For most of my life I have not been able to handle that knowledge. I didn't know the proper protocol for dealing with someone who relentlessly pursues you with goodness. In this life where the mail rarely holds something more exciting than bills; where even friendships too easily turn transactional and some only reconnect with you for the sake of using your social networking contacts to expand their business, how foreign is the concept of someone who gives perfectly.

Some are better than others at the fine art of resting by the mailbox. Image by RJ Roth.

Yet this is who he says he is, and who he demonstrates himself to be. So I believe. And I rest in believing.

Although I don't quite have the photogenic light-capturing attributes of certain grey felines.

Diverted

I had every intention of going to church that Sunday morning.

I had every resource I needed for going to church.

I had every reason for going to church.

What I did not have was the foreknowledge that the usual route to church would be blocked, necessitating a detour so big that I'd miss half the service by the time I got there.

So I swerved away from the road to church* and spent the morning letting leafy shadows shift over me as I sat and read. Waterfowl squawked, sputtered, splashed nearby. Children raced past on foot, on scooters, on shoulders, urging fathers faster.

(I can't say that last sentence fast out loud. Can you?)

Diversions happen. They can frustrate, confound, delay... or they can lead us to conclude that if we're going to end up somewhere else anyway, we might as well make it somewhere nice.

*A decision rendered much easier by the existence of a fledgling evening service; I am so, so thankful for the women and men who put much of their lives into the health of this congregation

Delivered

My parents raised us in a cultural vacuum, or near-vacuum, an uncomfortable space created by one parent's baby-and-bathwater view of cultural practices not implicitly described in the Bible and the other parent's putting up with it. I guess life sans baby, bathwater, towel and tub is easier to bear in the long run than the prospect of living indefinitely with belligerent dogma.

And so I've spent a lot of energy in the past few years trying to learn more about where I came from. One thing I'd observed and wanted to know the reason for: Hokkiens really, really like sugarcane. It's there on altars or near doors whenever there's a big festival; when you pass a bridal car on the street you know if at least part of the happy couple is Hokkien by the four feet or more of sugarcane stalk protruding from the car window. I wonder now why I've never heard of any traffic incidents caused by a motorcyclist or pedestrian getting swiped by sugarcane.

Image by Jesuino Souza

So, the short version of all that I've gathered from talking to relatives and reading strangers' blogs: the Hokkiens were once on the run from enemies. Sugarcane plantations were the only place that provided cover for our trembling ancestors while their homes got sacked and pillaged. And ever since then, the strong, flexible stalks have been a symbol of our thanks. They're present at every major milestone of life to remind us how fortunate we are that life goes on at all.

I also learnt that it's on the ninth day of each year (which falls today and YAY I just proved I still have some level of attachment to this blog and I am so glad I finally have a timely post, even if it did entail having lunch at my desk) that we ritually give thanks for our deliverance as a people. I wouldn't know first hand; see beginning of post. But I have always known that there's a day during the Chinese New Year period when my relatives go the whole hog -- actually, the whole pig (roasted, head on) -- preparing food and paper offerings. By the time I got old enough to ask questions, I was also old enough to decide I didn't want to ask them because I rather prefer sweet silence to another blood pressure raising, high-volume lecture on idolatry.

Much of my energy is spent on understanding why people say and do the things they do; when I fail to arrive at comprehension, I try to accept and tolerate because I think that is how you avert most of life's destructive moments. There are things worth fighting for but once they've been identified, you realise how much else there is, therefore how much isn't worth fighting over. So I don't bear any grudges for having had huge parts of my heritage withheld from me in my formative years. There's nothing I can do now to change it all.

I'm only left wondering: how do you get so hung up on whom to thank and how to express those thanks that you cause your entire family not to give thanks at all?

Twelve years

It seems a lifetime ago that the whole house stood still. So many changes since then: lines on faces, hairs turned grey, a grandson born, all the familiar feline forms that my mother knew gone the way of all cats.

Work and life alike throw me plenty of opportunities to talk about grief, to help others unpack theirs. That's the thing about grief, it really is a package. Its contents are mixed. Some days you reach in and pull out comfort, warm from the sun and smelling of cosy cuddles and laughs, whispered secrets and giggles and Saturday-morning shopping excursions.

At other times you feel bitten, as by a shark rather than by a mosquito: a large chunk of you, the part of you that this person shaped, is gone and you wonder how you go on. They don't make prostheses for that, but the human spirit is a wonderful regenerative thing. What grows back will never be what you had before, but it isn't completely foreign. I see others' experiences of grief, some much older than mine, and count myself blessed for the peace that I have.

I think I would have been a very different person if my mother were still alive. I don't know how much I'd have liked being that person. I only know and love the one I am now. I hope she does, too. From the nineteen years I had with her I've taken a lot, good and bad. A public blog is no place to tell about the bad. The good, no book on earth could hold.

I didn't feel any great pressure to post this today and only today, on the anniversary date. It worked out well that it fell on a Saturday this year, giving me time to blog. But truly, most days are the same. There's rarely, or never, a day when I don't think of her and miss her. It's really hard not to think of a person you strongly resemble in face and voice. But I've had a dozen years to find a way to live without the pillar of my earlier life. So far, by the grace of God, the way has been a good one to travel.

If you're one of those who knew and loved her too, raise a glass (okay, coffee mug -- containing a brew as strong as the mug can handle; we can always have a group tremour-and-tic session after) with me in honour and memory of the beautiful, tenacious, long-suffering, glad-hearted, cat-loving woman who was my (and my brother's) Mummy. Sally Saw Leng Geok, 1948-1999.

1: One

I thought it was fitting to end this last of my 31 series with "One". Not only because it's what comes after 2 when you're counting backwards; I do try to avoid redundancy in my language. "One" signifies a few things for me:

It signifies the idea of beginning; round number counting always begins with one. In order to have arrived at whatever age I am at the present moment, I first got to one. The seconds and days and years added themselves on -- but always one at a time, despite the seeming quickness or slowness of some seasons.

It signifies unity; within a person as well as with others. You don't have to be diagnosed with DID to be prone to disagreement with yourself. If you don't believe me, see what happens in your head the next time you reach for salty high-carb snacks that don't go with your diet; or when you need to decide whether to get out of bed for your daily run on a particularly drizzly day when your quilt is being very affectionate. For me, "one" is a reminder that I no longer fight myself over whether to go to work, whether to eat, whether I am bookish and analytical or creative and unstructured. I have found that it's absolutely possible, absolutely livable, to be bookish and creative and analytical and unstructured. Once I ceased to see the elements of my life as mutually exclusive, it became possible to live with them all, and that's such a relief because it doesn't feel nice to be rejected -- if only by yourself.

Finally, "one" signifies my Creator, the one without whom I wouldn't have made it through these nearly 31 years, let alone written 31 daily posts about them. I wouldn't say that faith is a huge part of my life; it is my life. It's a faith that has grown quite separate of my earlier experiences, mostly for the better; a faith that I have sought and asked for and wrestled with in order that it could become every bit my own. And what is faith without an object? Mine is utterly in God, who is one. Not "one of" a pantheon of guardian deities; just one. Not "one among" equals. One. Only. So massive that I can never coax my mind into understanding Him; so good that I can never stop wanting to.

When I began on Day 1, I wasn't sure I'd make it over these 31 days without skipping a day here and there -- there was this one particularly close shave that only barely scrapes through as an excuse for writing, but still... I did it! In case you missed any of them, here's 31. Thanks for reading.

Sara

For just over a year now I've been reading her blog, occasionally joining in her online community and simply learning how to live from someone who does it so well. Her constant refusal to let chronic illness take her joy while it stole her breath, her energy and her voice showed me that I also had a choice in how I responded to the difficulties of my own life.

Image from GitzenGirl

And now it looks as though soon there won't be any new posts, as she moves on to where life -- finally, after all these years -- won't be constant pain and struggle. But if I know her at all, as she's allowed her readers/book club friends to know her, she isn't focusing on what won't be but on what will: being home. I just didn't want to wait until I had to refer to her in the past tense, because she is and always will be all about the present. I'm so glad that soon, her present will be forever.

Edit 29/9/2011: Sara passed away on Saturday, September 24. Even if you don't visit Sara's blog, please read this. I don't think we could ever stop learning how to live well.

Today in Fremantle

After a surprisingly energetic wind had battered my ears and sent my balance wonky, after I had survived a blackly comical circular dance with my wind-whipped umbrella, after coming close to being knocked out cold and turned monocular by said umbrella;

After a late lunch of fish 'n' chips under shelter where my ears could stop stinging and my vertical orientation return, after reading another few emails exchanged between Solrun and Steinn, after being given a bag of hemp fabric swatches by a friendly shopwoman, after I stumbled upon the felt shop I had so hoped I'd find despite not having its address;

I wandered from the bustling heart of town until I reached South Beach, and saw this,

and remembered:

The light is always worth whatever happens along the way. And a thousand times more.

Packed

So, I've spent two weeks packing and saying my farewells and sorting out final things to do with this beautiful flat where I've been able to spend the first half of 2011, and all the while, I consciously think, I am so calm. I'm moving coast to coast, and it isn't bothering me at all.

Today I threw out the last of the trash. Waited for the on-time arrival of the removalists. Signed away my 20 boxes-and-parcels in faith that we'll meet again, me and the compactly organised, compulsively inventoried sum of my worldly possessions (in this country, anyway). Ate a quiche; ate a cake. Did some vacuuming. Put out some things for Freecyclers to collect at the pre-arranged time. Went for tea with a friend and her two very bright, entertainingly tangential children. Came home. Walked out again for dinner. Came home.

And it hit me all at once, what I've been trying to tell myself for weeks.

I'm leaving.

I really am.

I don't know when I'll come back here. I know I will, but it's all hazy and abstract, and it's unsettling that the place that's been my very concrete reality for three and a half years is soon going to be just another place in that miniature world in my head, in that part of me that stores the essence of eateries well loved and places that held my blood and secret bookshops that none of my friends know and benches in Hyde Park near the guitar busker where the shade never leaves you and the pavilion in that little waterfront park in Glebe where you're bound to get ambushed by a joyous dog on every visit and... and this post is running too long for someone so short on sleep.

So. I'm leaving. That's pretty huge, considering everything that's happened here.

But on the other end of this journey, I'm arriving.

That's even huger.

Trust, stem stitch, and a garden

I watched an old friend playing with his son in the garden.

Over and over again, he tossed the boy in the air and caught him. The response each time: a gurgling belly laugh and demands for "More! Again!"

I watched them, and thought how much fun the little boy was having.

Wondered whether he realises what a privilege it is, being able to do nothing but share a moment of delight with one's father.

Reflected on how the game is only fun, and only goes on, because my friend catches his son every time. Dropping him, by accident or on purpose (and yes, I've known that kind of parent, too), is simply not an option.

I stitched this a few weeks ago, as an exercise in refreshing two skills that had begun to wane: embroidery; and the word I set out to embroider.

My earlier stitches were uncertain and uneven, but by the time I reached that last "t" I knew where the needle should go and how tight I needed to pull. The motion and skill had been dormant all these creativity-less years; I only needed to awaken it. So, too, with trust. Something I thought I had been doing, and doing well, for years... and it turned out my stitches had been shaky in that department, too.

I sewed that last stitch at least a month ago, but I feel as though the work was only completed this past weekend, across the country in my friend's garden. Watching as a toddler exulted in the secure arms of his father, I was reminded that I have a trustworthy father, too. One whose presence I delight to be in. One who is infinitely infallible. One who also loves to toss me up and watch me soar.

And whose arms are there to catch me, every single time.

Walk

Westward bound tomorrow.

There's so much I don't know about what this time in Perth is going to be.

What I do know: that it's already a place with many friendly and familiar faces. Some of whom I can't wait to say "Hay!" to.

Healing

So many have been deeply wounded by nature in recent days.

May beauty return to dwell in these places, and within the ones who are learning to live once more.

By your side

Tenth Avenue North "By Your Side" from Provident Label Group on Vimeo.

I love everything about this song. The truthful lyrics; the unhurried metering; the rise-and-fall simplicity of the melody. I could listen to it over and over again.

It's the video and its added sound bites that I'm not so keen on, because it seems to send the subtle message that God is "by your side" only if you've lost your home to a hurricane, fire or similar catastrophe.

Which, I will never dispute, he is. And I am not disputing that the crisis relief organisation that produced this video does fine work.

It's only that the video doesn't do justice to the wide sweep of grace the song refers to. Because it doesn't take your being caught in a state-wide flood to get the Almighty's attention. The point is, wherever you are, he's there. Even in the situations that don't make for so much dramatic camera footage.

Like being stuck for eight years in what seems to be a career dead zone, and feeling too old -- and too scared of making your wife and kid suffer even more -- to make any change drastic enough to get you out.

Or finding yourself back in the very same section, and physical location, of the rat race you'd put all of your resources into escaping.

Or facing the end of a relationship that took up the second half of your 20s, blinking in disbelief and trying to navigate this new, lonely landscape.

Or waking up in a life that's got all the right boxes ticked, having all that you ever asked for and yet feeling that it's not what you wanted.

He's by your side there, too.

Wherever "there" is for you.

While waiting

I'm waiting for the ice to melt into my soba dipping sauce and form the ideal 1:1 proportion that the sauce bottle recommended, so that I can have cold noodles on an already cold evening.

While waiting, I've been doing what comes quite naturally to me: searching the Internet for names, phrases and concepts that come to mind, things I wonder about, places to revisit, questions I'd like to get answers to. Today I found myself keying in, "z-a-c-s-m-i..."

I first heard about Zac Smith halfway through last year. This video was being posted on a few of the blogs I followed then. I got the message, but I didn't know what to make of the video itself, of Smith's shockingly smooth delivery and seeming expressionlessness. We share the same beliefs; I agree with everything he says about purpose and eternity and the inevitable mortality of material existence; but still, I wondered that he never once choked up.

I heard a few months later that he'd died. Now, another few months later, I thought of him again, while waiting for the ice to melt in my soba sauce. No apparent reason; his name just came to mind. I found a lesser-known video of him in which he addresses the 17-year-old Zac Smith.

Just as deadpan, yet still thought-provoking.

What do you think your future self would tell you?

Mine, I hope, has more to say than "the ice has melted".

Which, soon, it will have.

From Zac Smith, I went on to search for Jeromy Deibler, another guy diagnosed young with a serious illness (chronic, not terminal -- sometimes it takes us a bit too long to realise it's life that's terminal), and from there was led to this song by his band, FFH.

In the waiting, indeed.

The ice has melted.

'American Dream' translates anywhere...

I've listened to this song for years without knowing that Casting Crowns made an official video of it. Much less that it was the first video they ever made. I appreciate the Crowns' work mainly for their lyrical excellence and musical proficiency, the way they make typically "classical" instruments rock. And the story-lover in me is drawn to how most of their songs are modern-day ballads, narrative set to music.

Yessss, so the fashion, cars and technology do date this video rather strikingly. Hello, 2003! Antennae on cell phones! Floppy man hair! etc...

But the message is pretty timeless. You know, having survived 2,000 years and more an' all.

It's hard to find a song of theirs that I don't love, but here's another favourite among the favourites.

If you like it, go buy it. I don't make any money off this link; I just believe artists deserve to be paid for their work.

To number our days

I started writing this post in my head yesterday (as you do...), which turned out to be a great long day of things not done in proximity to a computer and broadband.

It all began with the questions last week.

"Kor-kor*, when will you go to Australia?"

"Kor-kor, will you make me a calendar to show me how long more?"

The pudgy four-month-old baby nephew I left behind when I first set my sights on that elusive orange is now a lean, inquisitive ball of energy with a heart-melting, multi-dimpled smile. At the age of three and a quarter (as my father proudly told some old acquaintances yesterday -- "you're very precise," they told him), he's only just getting his head around the concept of time.

In the weeks before he was to begin his academic career at a local pre-school, he would ask a few times a day, "When do I have to go to school? Is it tomorrow?" (in various permutations, including Is it today? Is it Monday? Is it next week? Is it after Christmas?) Hence the appearance of the page-a-day tear-off calendar I solemnly presented to him, counting down to his first day of school.

Apparently, the daily ripping of the top page, the ritual of reading out the number and counting up to it on his fingers was such a success that he felt my approaching return flight required equal attention.

(That's what I tell myself; it sounds a lot better than "My nephew is counting down the days until I leave.")

And so, whenever I'm in the living room, it stares me in the face. A very tangible reminder of how much time I have left before I move on to the next stage of my life. How much time to spend with this small person who knows many wonderful things and who is a wonderful thing. How many days remain for me to see my family and friends in person, instead of trying to imagine their voices as I scan emails from across the distance.

Each time that little hand waved the calendar in my face with a gleeful "SEVEN days more, Kor-kor, you are here for SEVEN days more," I would cringe at the thought. I look forward to being back in Sydney for however long I find myself there, but I know there are also people I will miss dreadfully (or am already missing).

But then it reminded me of some ancient words I first read some years ago, words that I then began to echo in my own right.

"So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

Knowing that I have but a handful of days left in my birthplace, at least for now, is helping me to crystallise my idea of what this time should be. What I will do; what isn't worth my time; what I can achieve; what I hope will happen.

On a larger scale, it's how I've been trying to live for these past few years. It might be rather helpful if I had a tear-off calendar, too, like Keith. Unfortunately, I haven't been given the rather morbid benefit of knowing precisely how many days remain of my life. They may run well into the tens of thousands, if I have decades to go. But I really don't know, and maybe that's why I've come to see every day as being Day Zero. Even if I live long on the earth, I'm never going to experience this day again. I'm never again going to be positioned exactly where I am, with the people around me exactly as they are and conditions just so.

And so I find myself asking each day, what will today be? What am I being offered, and how shall I respond?

Because there may be seven or fifteen or three hundred and thirty-eight days left on some other calendar, but on the one that matters, today is The Day. The only one in which I can move and choose and speak.

And when I get to that Day, when I find there really is a solitary 1 on the countdown calendar of my life, I hope I will feel satisfied at having chosen well.

I will want to know that I had lived boldly and bravely, amassing riches that can't be corroded by the decaying agents of this temporal life. That I had loved well, for I have been loved well. That I had worked hard at what was established for me to do, becoming rich in experience and learning. That I had brought goodness to others. That I had danced joyfully through days bright and dim, and that my seasons in the darkness had purified, not putrefied, me. That I had stayed close to my loving Creator and praised him all of my days.

I can't come close to knowing that on my last day...

... unless I aim to know this in my every day.

A three-year-old nephew is a handy device for remembering how I want to live.

*Most Chinese dialect groups have an entire library of honorifics for every elder in the family. Since I'm my brother's only sister, my nephew gets to call me by the generic title allocated to one's father's sister/female relative of the same generation. I love that you can figure out how someone is related to you by how you address her. At least, I've got it nailed in Hokkien... any other dialect and I'm lost, back in the safe generic reach of "Auntie" and "Uncle" anyone.