This morning I skipped a rock
that hopped five times across the water before plunking to the bottom of the
creek bed—a personal record. I stopped then and rested from my run/hike across
the countryside behind my house, thinking deep thoughts about the impact of one
life upon another life.
People skim over the surface
of my life, like the rock making ripples in the water, and only a few sink
deep. What a gift these ones are, who have nestled even in the muddiest part of
my heart. Despite that part, really.
Yet, those that have rippled
by have changed me too. Perhaps it seems that the change is only at the surface
level, but those ripples continue to impact me long after they have died away
and after the people who have caused them have gone out of my life. Those words
you spoke, the ideas you shared, the deeds you did, continue with me.
She loved me for who I was,
even though we shared a room for only a week at summer camp.
He shared my love of books
and discussed them for hours on end with me.
Her name completed the puzzle
of my own, which led us to walk around with arms linked for half a day (at
least) proclaiming that together we were “Anastasia.”
She encouraged the gift of
writing that she saw glimmering beneath my overactive adolescent imagination.
Their influence was short,
but decisive. The ripples continue to extend.
And those who have sunk
deeper? It is almost too great for words to express how they have supported,
and comforted, and known me.
At any moment, these too
might be chosen and flung far away to influence another, or chosen and carried
away to rest in the nooks and halls of another, better home.
Will I know the time or the
hour? No.
Will the hollow remain when
that one, that stone, is taken away? Probably.
Why can they not stay
forever? I do not know.
His ways are not my ways.
