MEANWHILE
I am a fan of the late-night TV host, Stephen Colbert. I like his monologue, but I love the segment that often follows it, “Meanwhile.” It is not the snippets of crazy and unusual current events that hold my interest, but his long delivery of nonsensical words strung together before an announcer says, “Meanwhile,” that I love to hear. Had I been endowed with Stephen’s writers’ gift to string a litany of words together; I would have done so with my pen to preface an experience I had earlier this year. I wrote most of the content as it was happening.
I wrote, “I am sitting in my favorite chair in the living room. An unexpected trip to visit his mother-in-law in another state prompted a stop in Nashville. My only surviving brother of four is sitting behind me at the kitchen table enjoying a tall glass of orange juice. We are silent. The aroma of roasting plums is mixing nicely with the scent rising from a smoked turkey leg simmering on the stove in preparation for the soaked black eye peas. Today is the first day of 2024. I have an epiphany, meanwhile the craziness of the world continues … earthquakes in Japan, US and Israel and starving Gazans etc. Here I silently sit with my brother experiencing something that I have never experienced as an adult…sharing the start of a new year.
We and our spouses went to the movies, ate Italian food, and took multiple naps while pretending to watch TV yesterday. His was the second hug and “Happy New Year, I love you” of the new year. My awareness of this special moment is almost overwhelming.”
I am often guilty of missing the greatness, goodness, and miraculous-ness, of the ordinary. I didn’t miss this one. I recognized that I was getting to do one of the things I frequently mention and ask you to do, observing “wonderment in an unexpected place” and in ordinary things.
The moment, the day was such an ordinary one. As it progressed, the two of us spent it in the kitchen. I prepared a meal representative of our culture, and he washed dishes. We shared the fruit of our labor with our extended family late that afternoon.
It was my best New Year’s Day ever – maybe one of my best days ever. The memory of it has been sustaining during the difficult first quarter of the year. It was the best not because of the cooking, food, or drink but because of people sharing love and space. It was an ordinary day made extraordinary because my eyes of gratitude and unexpected wonderment were wide open.
PONDER THIS THOUGHT…Nicholas Sparks, “…simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things can be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people.”
