Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. (Maori Proverb)
The man at the pool grill, grate-thin, talks to my husband and me about the brats and hamburgers he prepares. He compares them to other means of cooking and rewarming. With a smile that expands him beyond his slender frame he announces, “I have stage-four cancer.”
My hearing is poor. I need new hearing aids; after nine years the old ones gave up trying to help me catch sounds—and occasionally actually to listen. Even if I didn’t hear every word this sunny gentleman said, I caught the line about his health, thrown in like a significant clue in a fascinating stay-up-all-night mystery novel. His tone sounds out of context. And yet, it doesn’t at all. He faces the sun and lets the shadows fall behind.
I watch his eyes and try to follow the level of his fascination for life—even the mundane turning of food on a grill at the YMCA pool.
The ordinary is no longer ordinary when someone’s hours could be counted, when those do-it-sometime-in-the-future dreams become a maybe. Taking-a-blessing-for-granted is not a luxury.
I am not a big fan of fast food. I like to create different vegetable and main course combinations maximizing color as well as choose salads with multiple greens. But somehow, as Mother Nature offers a blue overhead that can’t be duplicated by creatures, a pleasant warming sun dries our bathing suits, a gentle man demonstrates perspective. A white bun with grilled meat doesn’t seem all that boring.
This moment is innately good.
(quote found at the Optimism Revolution, tiny illustration by Terry Petersen)
terrypetersen 