I am a very visual person, which may seem ironic considering how blind I am/feel without my glasses. I cannot even answer the phone and hear the other person on the line properly until I put my glasses on. Lame, I know, but ask Tris, it's true. However, if I remember an event or a situation, I remember it as a positive or a negative experience by the 'colour' of my memory. For example, if it's a grey memory, even about a sunny summer day, it wasn't a happy event for me. I remember one very bright, sunny day when I answered the phone and had someone tell me of the suicide death of a family friend. The memory of me standing at the desk, holding our phone, looking out onto the summer flowers on our back deck, isn't bright and sunny. The colours of that day are muted and shadowed. Sometimes it's the memories of the stormy, grey, west coast autumn nights at home that are bright with the colours that surrounded us, like the warm quilts my kids wrapped themselves in on the couch, or the flames in our glass-fronted woodstove. What I see really influences me, and how I pull from that memory later sometimes surprises me.
If you've read my blogs recently, you'll note that we've been on holidays, and the holidays have been wonderful, relaxing and full of fun. We've spent time together as a family alone, together with other families, and although I haven't yet mentioned it, I even got to spend 2 days at a local hotel with Abby, just a girls time together. We headed to the mall where we dug in bargain bins for 'random' t-shirts (with weird sayings like "Help, I'm talking and I can't shut up!"), ate frozen yogourt and watched sappy dvds while we stuffed our faced with theatre popcorn, Junior Mints (found some here...what a treat!!) and some jelly bears. THAT is definitely going to be a bright memory.
It's funny, though, that as I look over the past 2 weeks, there's one scene that sticks in my mind, one fleeting memory that is dark not only because it was past 6 pm, but because of the scene itself. When I think of it I get that lump in my throat and it makes me really start to think of what it is I am doing here. It's one of those 'kick in my pants' moments that I hope spurs me on to keep holding on to the dreams God gave me years ago, and to allow the new dreams I have to grow and drive me forward. On Saturday night we were leaving one of our favourite 'Saturday night' restaurants and we headed into extremely busy traffic. The road we entered is a 6 lane road, with a cement divider between the two traffic directions. Walking across the street in this area is sometimes next to impossible and very dangerous for an adult, let alone a kid. To my right was this cement divide, and on it were two young boys. One of the boys was sitting there, playing with a piece of string or a stick, and he was facing the other boy, who was laying there. The boy laying down looked as though he was sleeping, and actually looked rather peaceful doing it. This isn't a terrible scene, with blood or pain involved, none evident on the surface at least. However, this scene shouldn't be occurring in the middle of 6 lanes of Saturday night city traffic. It looked like a scene that could have been lifted from one of the kampungs: two grubby little boys in torn clothes settling down together for the night. Neither of them looked too worried. In fact, the awake boy seemed oblivious to the dangers around him. It's not like I haven't seen scenes like this before. In fact, I've seen ones that could be considered far more traumatic, but this one has stuck with me like a pin stucking a live beetle to a cork board.
I'm not too sure how this scene will influence my decisions, but I do know that as I contemplate my Masters and whether or not I'll be able to get a job after I spend oodles of time and money on it, I am hoping and praying that I can become a part of the solution for boys like these. I'm not sure how, but as I continue to live here I'm praying God will give me the direction and the peace about the decisions I am making, and will open doors to do the things that burn within me.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment