Staying Awake

The snow is blazing through our downtown Main Street. I can see the Ellen Theatre sign and above it, covered in white, the name of some movie promising escape.

When our three children were little, my husband joked to them about how he would stuff his mouth with popcorn and then stick a straw in the side of his mouth. The coke would dissolve all the popcorn. Life can be avoided, muted.

Perhaps life is just too intense to face. If we did we might be overwhelmed, living always in the context of death, never able to turn away from the inevitability of our impermanence. Every time the marquee above the theatre changes or we make it to the end of the month without overdrawing our account, there is a certain relief.

And still there is the other side. I couldn't capture the children and hold to their youth, but instead the lines on their faces grow, just as my own. I even saw my father, stoic most of his life, opened by life's insistent refinement. Even rocks change. We seem to be barreling toward some profound love that rubs away illusion until we are rendered real. It is not ours to control. It is ours to stay awake.