My house has the biggest elephant ears I’ve ever seen. They line the garden bed behind the back window, and each morning heart-shaped leaves as big as beach balls stand far above my hips.
The sun feels personal during Texas summers. Like a toddler who woke up angry, hurting, needing to be acknowledged. Impossible to ignore.
And as the sun screams, like clockwork, the green leaves and celery-like stalks—who a few hours earlier stood beautiful, dignified—slowly curve towards the earth, the weight of the leaves sometimes too much for the stems to hold, snapping as they wilt. Every single day these companions, as demanding as the sun, ask for tending. Every day, impossible to ignore.
The only way I know to keep living is to pay attention.
To pay attention to the black fluff that curls beside me. A real live animal, just walking around my house.
To pay attention to how my body feels when I turn off the podcast, the TV, the music. To see when the quiet feels like solitude and to see when my body says the silence is simply too lonely.
To pay attention to how the spot in the yard I have chosen to have breakfast in is covered in caterpillars, a whole world beneath my feet. To pay attention to how that makes me think of “The Magic School Bus” and “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” and how magical and wonderful and silly stories were when we were little. To pay attention to the ache I feel wondering if magic and silliness are still within reach.
To pay attention to the cries of mothers being torn from their babies and to pay attention to how utterly helpless, hopeless, numb I feel to the evil I am soaked in.
To pay attention to the way that putting letters togethers into words and stringing words together into sentences somehow makes everything starker, without making it louder. To pay attention to how words make the pain and the beauty manageable, not because I’m in control but because I am present, standing witness, paying attention.
“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.” -Frederick Buechner
Here is the world, a mixed bag. Dirt below the surface filled with terrifying, interesting creatures; the mess that gets under your fingernails impossible to scrub completely away; the roots that hold steady, thick, tangled. And, on the good days, blooms that peak their heads out, baby sprouts and pollen-covered flowers.
Life below. Life above. All at the same time. Begging for tending.
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