Whispers

I switch on my laptop and the fan wakes and whirs. The burst of slightly creaky sound suggests a machine that’s trying too hard, like a young man straining to impress. My desktop flashes up and Christiana looks up at me shyly, her right hand self consciously raised behind her head scratching some little itch, the perfect of smiles stretched across her face. A tipping of the balance in her continuing journey from pretty to beautiful can be seen in this now two year old pose. She is surrounded by a sunset glow casting a long shadow behind her.

This is our little daily moment and I feel a rush of sweet emotion, not so much reliving the times I have shared with little Christiana or her family but the feelings that have surrounded those events. I feel. Love. Joy. Pain. Hope. I wish her a good morning. She keeps smiling, scratching, shying away from this now frozen moment of attention.

I look over the top of my screen and see my brother relaxing across the room from me, his leather seat gently reclined, socked feet stretched out on a matching futon. Backlit by floor to ceiling windows behind, his silhouette is engrossed in a magazine. However, his submersion remains incomplete and from time to time he throws out contributions and corrections to a conversation his wife and a friend are enjoying. The two girls are stretched out on a bed in an adjoining room, their chattering voices audible over the morning’s soft Bon Ivor soundtrack.

A flicker of movement catches the eye, pulling an instinctive focus out those large windows which so dutifully stand to attention in front of us all. A Great Northern Diver flies low and straight over the gentle laps of the Hood Canal. It comes to a splashing stop by a lazily bobbing buoy under the bright but grey sky. The morning is preparing to stretch its way into afternoon but the Olympic mountains have yet to cast off their cloudy blankets and meet the new day. A sleepy peace flows in and through me, those surrounding me and the creation which lounges around me. I feel massaged, serenaded and smiled into Sabbath. I feel. Blessed.