on travel and time

They look forward to road trips, like I used to. We tell them about the bayou at the end of the drive, the grandpa with the deep child voice, and the cousins who’ll humor, and they count down the days.

“How many more days till Lousiana, Mama, and then how many more days till Alabama?”

and this morning after seeing the forecast, the thought of ruining their expectations, what has fueled their imaginations for weeks now, makes me want to tell a story other than truth. 

“A snow storm is coming, and we may not be able to go to Louisiana at all.” It hits him in the gut, starts the lip quiver, and he cries. I thought he would be sad to not see the bayou, the moss waving like blankets on a line. I thought he would be sad to not see his cousins, dear to his soul, often in dreams.

But it was Grandpa he wanted. He never stifles a cry, but this time, he tried hard but couldn’t stop, and I wanted to scoop his lanky five year old body and cradle him like every broken heart should be cradled. He leaned in, said he would miss Grandpa, and it dawned on me, how much he loves, how Grandpa faces the rise and set of the sun on the water. He watches the wood ducks from a hospital bed. 

Isaac has known that Grandpa seems close to Heaven, and before he was so matter-of-fact about it, but now, I see my child age, begin to have a concept of time, the bitter of it.

I realize what a funnel for worry and for the what-ifs that TIME is. I’m doing it now, too: what if we don’t get to go, and something happens? What if I run out of time?

And I will. My little Isaac will. It’s certain. So today we cradle what’s in front of us, and we talk about God, how outside of time He is, how he can scroll through beginning and end like a rolodex. Are we already with God (with our family in God) and don’t yet realize it, how close we are?

The storm still comes. Plans re-arrange. Hearts break, even in their Mama’s hands. But there is sweetness in such longing, in the brokenness of deep love, of being up against the thin veil, but not yet having it lifted. 

The imagination was made for these things, for the Alpha & Omega of God’s Forever Eye, for the paradise version of dinosaur-swarmed bayou, and for the trip we take between here and there, how all the disappointments in the world will turn a forgetful vapor, like steam rising from a real, good cup.

{for Chatting at the Sky’s Tuesdays Unwrapped}

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Tagged as: imagination, invisible, Worry