typewriters

For much of my childhood, I slept to the clicker-clacker of a typewriter.

Later on, I would wake up to the sound of our dot matrix printer, etching away at court documents.

And when all was said and done, when the divorce was over and we finally had peace, quiet, and some semblance of stability in our lives, my waking hours were spent in semi-conscious conversations with Mom over what we should do when she returned from work and we had a chance to spend time together. Because by the time I was fully awake, she'd already be off at work making sure things were ok for us.

It's a funny life, and I know that she, more than anybody else, wished she'd had more time to care for us and build us up...to make sure we always had a refuge from the troubles of the world, and times to go out and do fun and interesting and memorable things. We did, of course, but in a life as odd as ours, a simple meal in the heart of town was already novel and cherished. No faraway lands, no grand explorations. We'd had them in the past, when we looked like the "average" family. Plenty of opportunities to take that corporate holiday off to Europe or whatever, and tour all the grand locations, see those Hawaiian sunsets, that Tahoe snow. And in the end, all of that was just part of the facade that we'd have to tear down in the course of those late nights of cheap TV movies and letters marching across justified paper.

We are a simple people. We learned to enjoy the simple things, because for us, they already were precious. They celebrated the chances when we could just be...together. Two soldiers each marching through the same battlefield, but so often called to run separate legs of the grand plan. And the times that we shared, simple as they were to the untrained eye, were every bit as precious to us as the grandest of affairs.

Blessed are the poor.

In the later days, I would fall asleep in the deep blue glow of a quiet room, after the computer had been turned off and the streetlamp outside my room lent me a fraction of itself. Before then, I would walk into my mom's room, silence the television's chatter, and if need be, fold over that other half of the blanket such that it no longer mattered that she'd fallen asleep on top of it instead of underneath.

And now, I hope and pray that there will be days when I can now be the one who kisses her before she wakes up, who hugs her and makes sure that everything's ok. And though I should fail in that, I ask simply that I might never let her down...that I will make sure I can give others that same security that she so desperately sought out for me.

What is sacrifice? What happens to the people who see so clearly that they are on the receiving end of it? And how does that change the way they live?

This is how I know what love is
Though I'm a sinner, Christ laid down his life for me
And that's the greatest act of love in history
When my Jesus died for me...this is love