Absurd and Beautiful Glories, Thousands of Them

I refuse to lose sight of hope.

Hi, friend. Thanks so much for stopping by. Here, I write about finding the little bits of hope and joy tucked away in the long journey of waiting for circumstances to change. If you like what you read, please consider upgrading your subscription. Anything I earn goes right back into my writing.

Photo by Roman Melnychuk on Unsplash

I’m standing at the counter, cutting the crust off a peanut butter jelly sandwich, lost in the thoughts that plague a mother: Do we have enough pull-ups? Is the world getting better or worse? Are we out of milk? What will happen in the next five, ten years?

Behind me, with a mouthful of orange slices, my three-and-a-half-year-old asks me what a ‘refugee’ is.

Despite the abruptness of that question, it’s an easy one, considering how that word affects our family. The answer is solid, an easily definable thing. I wipe my hands on the kitchen towel and tell her in the simplest way I know how, leaving her dad out of the response this time. One day we’ll share the stories. One day we’ll tell her the sacrifices he made, the barriers he hurtled. For now, though, my one-sentence answer is enough for her. She nods and goes back to eating the orange.

Earlier that morning, when the sun was just starting to stretch herself above the horizon, I watched a solitary maintenance worker walk across the parking lot attempting to balance a large orange traffic cone on the tips of his splayed fingers. One arm was outstretched in front of him, the cone balancing and teetering, his other arm held out to the side for counterbalance. He laughed to himself and caught the cone in his arms.

Out the kitchen window, magpies hopped with delicate precision across the weathered wooden poles that support the growing evergreen saplings. It was a little bit of nature in our concrete jungle, providing a respite from all the gray and hardness. The birds picked their breakfast from the ground and chattered and squawked.

Two women briskly walked by, their strides matching up perfectly. Both right legs stepped forward at the same time. Then both left legs followed. The synchronized stepping was like a dance and beautiful in its ordinary.

That afternoon, I waited at the bus stop. A woman came a couple of minutes later. No sooner had she sat down on the metal bench than she popped back up and walked a few paces out from under the awning. I watched her tilt her face to the sky and drink in the sun that was shining between parted clouds, eyes closed, a smile spreading across her face.

It’s strong today, an older man said to her behind me, nodding toward the sky. His voice was muffled behind his paper mask, but I saw the corner of his eyes crinkle as he looked at my daughter, who was jumping from puddle to puddle in the shade. He recited a common blessing to her. His hands pantomimed tossing a ball as he spoke it out, and I imagined the words moving through the warm air and settling over her.

My daughter thinks it’s possible to control your dreams. Before I left her room at bedtime, she asked me what I’d be dreaming about that night. I used to try to correct her, tell her you can’t actually decide beforehand what dreams you’ll have, that you have no power over them. But all attempts were futile. She forged on, telling me she would dream about strawberry cupcakes or riding on unicorns under rainbows. So I told her that I’d dream about those things too, that I’d meet her there, under the rainbow.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe you can set out to decide what you’ll dream about, to visualize the future first as your head hits the pillow.

Maybe we do have more power than we think.

I guess all this to say is that I refuse to lose sight of hope, even while keeping an eye on the atrocities of the world. Through gritted teeth, you’ve got to rip some joy out of the tightly clenched fists of the universe. You’ve got to. Because they are there—a thousand glimmers of joy beneath the mire holding us in place—these tiny extraordinary glories.

If I can do that, to take my share of joy, to dream about it first and keep it from slipping through my fingers, the world will feel like something I can still manage to hold.