A little over 11 years ago I learned that I had cancer.It was thyroid cancer, easily treated; but it was a reminder that, like everyone, I am under sentence of death. Six years ago I found myself staring down the barrel of 40. In less than four years, I'll be staring down the barrel of 50. Time is, time was, time's done.
With the time we spend on the business of living, sometimes it seems like it's not possible actually to live. And yet it is! I've met so many people for whom stagecraft is not a hobby or something they do. It's a driving passion.
The march of hours may demand its pound of flesh at work and even at home, but when they are on stage, time stands still. There, in their element, they transcend themselves and become life's master. If life is a light, that is a moment when it has the intensity of the noonday sun upon a winter's day where the world is blanketed in snow.
Life like this is rarely a solitary thing. It is something shared, something given. We impart our passions to another, and they elevate us in turn.
On Wednesday afternoon Youngest Daughter decided she wanted a flower bed of her own. So we set down some cardboard over part of the lawn, and added compost and a layer of mulch. Then I took a shovel and dug up a clump of daffodils from the front yard. Together we broke those up, and planted a dozen in the new flower bed.
Youngest Daughter's soul danced. Her face glowed. The flower bed is an aspiration for the future, as all gardens are at this season. Her only wish is that the flowers live and bring beauty. In that hour of working together on her garden, she didn't exist. She lived and I lived with her.
Copyright © 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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