Dear Sister Lily of the Field,
I heard the beating of the thom thom and it spoke to me--
"you have no life. You have no life."
And I thought My goodness! How embarrassing! Where could it be?
I could have sworn I put it on the coffee table after dinner.
Do you think the cat, mistaking it for a mouse, dragged it under the couch and nibbled away at some of my days?
And I asked my husband, who looked at me in disgust, saying, "Have you lost it again? We really can't afford to keep replacing your life like this. I haven't paid off the last one."
And the boys, in their teenage self-absorption, worried only that I wouldn't find it in time to wash their baseball uniforms.
So I made a cup of tea and sat in the sunroom, wondering-where does a life go anyway? What do people to with their big fat lives-they must be so difficult to lug around, events falling out and people being left behind unnoticed, the benefit being, I suppose, that those bulky stuffed ones don't get misplaced easily. I drank another cuppa, having nothing else to do, and thought--maybe it's not so bad-having no life...and decided to have more tea instead. But as I went to the kitchen I heard my boys and my husband at the basketball hoop and one stuck his head in the door and yelled, "Mom-c'mon! We need a fourth"--and realized that I hadn't misplaced my life at all. It was right there all along. |
