Tiny steps, mellow reflections

The hours slip by, slowing adding up to days and years. Life is being spent with every breath and each heartbeat counts the rhythm that makes up my existence. Thump-thump… thump-thump… thump-thump. My footsteps sense the tempo of my heart and begin an uneven skipping as I walk this weed-infested sidewalk. “Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back.â€? I hear a younger self singing somewhere in the back of my brain, like a vaguely familiar musical refrain that passes through the dark stairwell of a twelve-story apartment building. I knew that girl once. Where did she go? Who is she now? Who is she becoming?

The days meld themselves into months and the years group into seasons. Memories flit by on a broken projector screen… Cherry-pineapple big sticks and a favorite pink button-up shirt imprinted with bears in tuxedos. A brand-new kitten stuffed in a mayonnaise jar and a massive white dog bounding up with wagging tail and sloppy tongue. The feel of a new softball in my hand and a tearful farewell to my faithful old glove. Squirt guns and surprises under my pillow, candy stowed away in my closet, precious treasures stored in my “100-year old penny box,â€? and a sense of endless youth found in adventurous sleep-overs in the old, bug-infested fort. The pincher bugs and spiders weren’t all that frightening… it’s amazing how memory covers up all the scary inconveniences of the past.

Child, youth, adult. Such is the cycle all must endure, yet does each person pass through the phases successfully? Perhaps there are pieces of my self that I lost along the way… some pieces are found amongst the sneezy little dust bunnies under the bed, and others are uncovered in the weird “everythingâ€? drawer. But other pieces might have been destroyed or mutilated through suffering, or put in a box that was accidentally thrown away in the Monday morning trash collection. Who could I have been if someone had found that box of odds and ends headed for the dumpster and washed them in a strong solution of hope and love?

Cycles… I once heard that life is like an ascending spiral (or a descending spiral, if hope is lost). A series of connected concentric circles, climbing round and round, higher and higher. If I were climbing this spiral, I would notice that I would see similar surroundings each time I completed a full cycle. That from point a all the way around to point a again, I would encounter points b, c, d, etc. So in a sense, I would have twenty-six points of scenery, twenty-six different walls to climb, joys to delight in, or issues to encounter. And I’ve found this to be true in my life — things do seem to cycle around and I encounter the same things again and again. But the part about this ascending spiral that I like is that each time I encounter that “thingâ€? again, I’m a step higher than before. This thought brings me hope, because I might “loseâ€? something at point g but perhaps I can find it or rebuild it when I come back around the next time.

“Tiny steps, dancing on the rim. Is there welcome within? Toes and heels, asking with eager uncertainty.� Am I okay? Life seemed simple with that huge popsicle in my hand, climbing nimbly up the wooden ladder to my fort.