someday

A. has been bugging me all week to come up with something to put in his time capsule. He plans to bury this box tonight and draw a map so that someday--ten years from now-- we can discover something about our today selves.

A. is nothing if not persistent. I say no to him so often that when I can, I try to say yes. Even if stopping and examining my current life is the last thing I want to do during this week that has felt like a decade.

My participation in this activity is an act of faith. I am hanging my hope on lines of longitude...if you follow them far enough into the future, everything ends up okay. He will be okay. I will not lose him and he will not lose us. We will dig up the proof and laugh at our silly former selves.

Remember how I was so crazy and angry? he might ask, when he pulls out a page of notes detailing his daily routine (He is the embodiment of OCD), scrawled in his cramped and anxious handwriting that makes me think of the Unabomber.

Being 18 wasn't easy, was it? I'll shrug. Maybe I'm balancing a baby on my hip. Maybe we just buried our faithful old dog.

I'm looking around my life, trying to figure out what to pick out and place in a box in the ground. Today in class we went over similes and metaphors and when I asked for an example, L. said Ms. S, your eyes are as fresh and green as apples. I'd like to remember that moment and the way it stopped me dead in my tracks--not only for the unexpected compliment, but also for the reminder that both poetry and kindness show up everywhere, all the time, if you're open to it.