Don't forget.

Beata is talking to her parents on her way out the door.
When I ask how they are and what they are doing today,
she tells me that they are off to pick mushrooms at the base of the hill.
She tells me this as we cross bumper to bumper traffic and wearily make our way downtown,
still exhausted from the previous day at the office, from the previous week at the office, from the previous month...

Their kind of simplicity seems foreign to me so early in the morning...here they are walking slowly ,in and out of the shade, an occasional spider-web strand brushing against their cheek, spotting items for their evening supper.
Meanwhile I am a dissonant chord of to-go coffees and buzzing trains.

Yet I find I am yearning for their afternoon as if
as if it were something I have already experienced.

Is that possible? To know of a time or a place without actually knowing it?
To know of their forests without ever having traveled over the ocean?

I look at Beata, who is on the verge of screaming Polish profanities at the woman in front of us.
Just the night before she was in her red long john pajamas, doing cartwheels in the living room
and distinguising the roll of toilet paper that was for people and the roll of toilet paper that was for cats.
and just an hour ago, serving us breakfast of fortune cookies, chocolate, 1/2 a granola bar, a quaker oat cookie and homemade espresso.

How easily it is to forget.

Then I am reminded of a verse...
"The Lord is your shade at your right hand."
Such comfort in this, that He is:
Always. Constant. Close.

And so I think "yes".
rather, I know "yes."
That it is possible.

Because while I maybe not know the shade of the pines that tower above her parents as they reach to the ground and
feel the cool wet dirt on their hands...there is a shade, a peace, that is sweeter than any laundry- line Monday,
the source of all things simple and good. The source of Goodness itself.

And so I breathe deeply, and offer up a prayer of thanks.
That I won't be here forever,
and that while I am He will remind me of His prescence,
remind me that somday we will walk in forests together,
"far from these crowded streets".