One night this mirror will reflect…but a wall.

Spring is upon us…again. Crocus creep out of the soil, I poke out of winter. But the flash is once again before me.

Life passes more quickly these days:

St. Patricks Day, Memorial Day, summer a flash, a season gone,  Labor-Day-Christmas-tree-sales. And so it goes…snowflakes to sunflowers…then poinsettias…again.

Every night I stand before a mirror. Every night I floss and think, “I just did this five minutes ago!” But five minutes ago, was last night!

Life is a pool for me, one stroke, one lap, one day, at a time, in Long Beach, NY.

Push off from life’s edge in the morning: then it’s stroke after stroke, up at six, brush teeth, newspaper, email, TV news, stroke, stroke, blog, lunch, walk Bailey, nap, stroke, stroke, photos, blog, read, dinner, news, watch movie, popcorn, jello/fruit or ice cream, brush teeth, floss, bed, sleep, stroke, stroke, stroke. A lap gone, a day gone.

I see my reflection and I reflect…on life and how fast it passes.

Then I reflect on how it no longer passes quickly for so many. It no longer passes at all. It is gone…it has passed…in a flash. Sometimes a flash of steel and fire and lead.

So many of my Brother and Sister Police Officers, so many Brother and Sister veterans…gone. Their bathroom mirrors reflect…but a wall.

How they would wish to leave that legion of the lost, the ranks of the remembered, to stand front and center before their home’s mirror. How they would cherish just one more day to be alive again, to sleep with a loved one, awaken to kitchen scents, to stroll the shore, breathe salt air, savor a beloved’s smile, hear a child’s laughter.

No, their day of return would not pass in a flash.

Nor would anyone’s you have loved and lost.

Nor I…while I’m still alive.

Now I see tenuous life clearly. One night this mirror will reflect…but a wall.

But now I’m still between the wall and the mirror. Now I live. I am.

So I slow down, I stop. At different times and different places in my day. I realize life, taking no thing for granted.

This America, for all its faults, is the land to which humankind flows. I live in it! I see, I feel that realization, I see life up-close, as the man who was in the mirror would…if he could.

Life, the people, the animals, the bursting vegetation, all of it… is unfolding with me.

Kite boarder, Len…being.

As I start my softer seasons I  become more mindful, become more present with those close to  me, with those not so close. I hear, I listen. I appreciate, I acknowledge. I see myself in them. I know myself in them.

I see people doing what they love, being with whom they love, artists, kite boarders, photographers, bikers, joggers, lovers, moms with their kids.

I gulp the salt air, pulling it in as if it were the first time. I am newborn life.

I too “fly” with the gulls as do the innocents before me. I am. In the land of the free.

Be well, be newborn,

Leebythesea

Home: http://leebythesea.me