somehow i’d like to think of myself as anything but wilty. only i’d know it wasn’t so. i am. wilty. so is he. we are both wilty. not quite the same as the wilty kale we put out next to the garage for the mama bunny and bunbun, but most definitely wilty.
and so, as we drove away, with our cut-in-half halos for the off-trail “ammals” (thank you, jaxon, for this most-adorable non-wilty pronunciation), d said – in his i’m-enlightened-now-and-want-to-share-it voice, “that’s it!! they’d hire us if we weren’t so wilty!!!”
we laughed and he guffawed at his wit and utter sidesplitting jocularity and then we looked at each other – we neeeed to write that down!! so i grabbed my iphone and summoned siri, the great goddess of handless note-taking.
“what would you like it to say?” she politely asked. i answered and she dutifully jotted our note.
and then we looked at it.
uh-huh.
“they’d hire us if we weren’t so wealthy,” she transcribed.
hiLARious.
goddess-schmoddess. siri has her own unique wilty sense of humor.
in a twist of irony, the measured-computerized female voice on our voicemail the other day admonished us, “sorry. you did not reveal yourself to be human. goodbye.”
what??!
the audacity!
we are sitting in the emptied living room of my in-laws as we write. long grooves in the carpet reveal where the couch was and a few browned leaves lay in a trail of the shedding ivy that was moved yesterday. pictures are off the wall and the mirrors have been taken down. we sit at the counter on folding chairs from the shed out back.
all along the top of the mantel are shot glasses, part of columbus’ collection, the rest of which are on shelving downstairs or on top of the player piano in the family room. they read things like “green bay” or “maker’s mark” or “south dakota” or “heidelberg” or “cedar rapids, iowa” or “yosemite national park” or “krakow” or “utah shakespeare festival” or “ithaca college” or “chicago” or “estes park” or “florida” or “skagway”. over a hundred, there are too many to list. but they are a glimpse into a life – a human life – a timeline shared by others.
columbus went to some of these places, not all. but his beloved family and dear friends would bring him tiny glassware from wherever they roamed. their story became his story in the way that sharing stories works.
it would be a 100-act play to sit and listen to the narrative behind each of these memory shots; it would reveal times of travel and joy and yearning and the seeking of adventure. it would traverse across miles of decades; it would travel around the globe. it would be punctuated with laughter and sighs and maybe a few tears.
the thing i know – it would be rich with human-ness, rich with revelation, rich with love.
reverse threading 