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As I sit in my living room, I hear so many different sounds: my dog’s breath as he sleeps by my side, the antique German clock ticking, Caltrain on the rails, songbirds and squirrels in the oak trees, the newspaper rattling in my love’s hands, cars and motorcycles on their way to destinations unknown to me, my heartbeat, children calling to one another . . .
This is a completely special moment, and a completely mundane one. It is simply a slice of time in which I am actually present and paying attention.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this being the only life we have to live. Maybe it’s because my birthday is a time of my annual self-reflection (as opposed to the daily one, especially about how I am doing as a wife, a mom, a friend, and a therapist — oh yeah, and as a human being). Maybe it’s having gone through the grief of so many loved-ones’ deaths over the years. Maybe it’s having recently faced cancer in my own family, and now, coming out the other side into healing that I am again awed by life and opportunity. That this is happening at summer solstice reminds me that the cycles we live through each year are the trial run of life and death.
I listen, and then I don’t. I listen again. Right now.
