I Walk Alone

**

To fully experience this post, please press play on the video before you begin reading. Thank you, and enjoy your flight.

It is past seven when he walks in the door. I have two hours left to get all the things I need before the stores close. The baby is asleep and I hurriedly toss out some instructions regarding the dinner that is in the oven as I put on my coat and head out the door.

Armed with an umbrella and two reusable shopping bags, I walk alone under the nearly bare trees and through a maze of puddles accompanied by only my thoughts. OH MY THOUGHTS, how I have MISSED you! My life has become a cacophony of incessant chatter punctuated by bouts of crying by one or both of my children. And I love them, OH I LOVE THEM. It has just been quite some time since I was able to begin a thought and follow it through to it's end without someone waking up or yelling,"

MOMMY, WIPE MY

BUUUUUUUUTTTTTTT

!" from the other room.

I walk alone and ponder the nature of God. The beauty of this life; a flock of ten thousand starlings against a gray Autumn sky even seems beautiful in its lack of color. Head lights and neon signs reflected in a rain puddle and then gone in the splash of a tire. It is only a two block walk but I take it, slowly, breathing deeply, remembering as much as I can of these few moments. I will save them in that special place in my heart and pull them out again someday.

Climbing the steps to the store, I look into the faces of each person and wonder who they are. I want to KNOW them. All of them. What makes them beat and tick, who and what do they love? I want to run away with them to a place where we can almost see our thoughts as they float above us in a cloud of smoke while we drink tea from places of which I've only imagined going. But. That's just silly.....the heady whims of an ambling dreamer. And so I push them back down into the deeper corners of my soul and pull the grocery list from my pocket.

"The avocados are ripe this time".

And just like that the thoughts are gone

....who knows when they will return

. I have switched faces, gears; persona's. Back to the business at hand. Pull my head from the clouds. And while the business at hand may not be as heady, it has it's own subtle and intense pleasures; feeling a dozen skins in pursuit of the perfect apples, the warmth of a baguette fresh from the oven, thinking of the people I love and hand selecting items with which I will create something to warm their bellies and souls; pouring my love into it like batter from my heart.

I saved 10 cents bringing my own bags. This time as I walk home I try to figure out how much I will have saved over some time. I've never been much good at math. As I walk with a bag in each hand, I imagine I am a Dutch girl with wooden shoes and two buckets of milk hanging from a stick across my shoulders.

Upon opening the door, I am greeted with the smell of dinner and exclamations of

MOMMY'S HOME

! My heart swells and like a flock of ten thousand starlings, may take flight.