One of my favorite heroines, Zora Neale Hurston wrote the line “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Apparently it’s to do with the flow of creative life, but I can also see how it can apply to the days of our lives, our day to day flow and how we can be cruising along, blissfully unaware, perhaps on autopilot — and then — blindsided. A shattering blow. Friday was like that for my sister’s family. I didn’t see the text until yesterday morning when I went downstairs. Times like these, I want to hit stop motion, press pause, rewind…and return to that sweet spot before the world turned upside down. But I can’t — so I return to the book on tape I’ve been listening to intermittently, Suleika Jaouad’s “Between Two Kingdoms,” — Suleika, a recent college graduate, 23 years old, off beginning her adult life in an exciting city — and bam, hit with a gutting diagnosis. At the moment, our family remains in that in-between space of not knowing and not wanting to think or say what we’re afraid of, hoping and not daring to hope, that place no one wants to be in and everyone wants to stay in if it means living in this eternal moment of possibility just a little bit longer. For the next few days, there will be times we breathe, and times we hold our breath.
