What Tomorrow Will Bring

My internet has been very “iffy” lately, so I apologize for the lack of updates. I’d like to say that it’s fixed, but who knows what tomorrow will bring.

On my way home this evening, I passed a house on the corner with three blue towels hanging from the second floor window. They looked so beautiful swinging in the hot summer air, dancing like streamers against the empty white wall.

I thought of the enchanting Indian woman in her orange dress, hanging laundry out to dry beneath the palm fronds in Goa. We were in the hospital. Poor Claire had gotten the measles from one of the children we were working with, and as she slept away her 103-degree fever, I sat watching the quietness of the world outside.

The colorful clothes swung gently on the line, back and forth, on top of what appeared to be an abandoned building. By the time I had finished fixing Claire’s IV that had managed to reverse itself, and returned to the window, the woman had vanished. A dog ran wildly about, and I wondered how he had gotten up there, and more importantly, how he planned to get down. The clothes continued to wave.

They hung everywhere, those beautiful fabrics, and while I’d always noticed them, this was the first instance I could recall being truly moved by their eloquence. There was something about the simplicity of the scene that left me with a feeling of serenity I hadn’t felt in such a very long time. I remember writing in my journal that I’d miss the exquisiteness of those kinds of daily routines when I got home.

And I did. I missed them. But when I saw those blue towels hanging there this morning, I realized it wasn’t the fabric that I missed. It wasn’t the laundry waving in the Indian wind; it was the sense of calm I felt watching it. It was the peaceful feeling that can only come from true relaxation, from taking the time to breathe in the sweetness of life.

And it isn’t America that’s forgotten how to do that. It was me. Somewhere along the way I had forgotten how to dance in the moonlight, to sing as though no one was listening, to stop and watch the universe float in the breeze. My life had once again become about money and schedules and chores. It had reverted back to what I had hoped to leave behind.

But magic doesn’t leave one’s life so easily. I can still feel it. I know it’s still there. It’s in the flowers I’ve planted in the backyard (in the picture above), and the visions of India I see when I close my eyes to sleep at night, and the blue towels hanging from the window on the corner. It’s all around me. It’s everywhere.

My life hasn’t reverted back to what I had hoped to leave behind. It can’t. It never will. I can only go forward, into today, into tomorrow, not knowing what any of it will bring. I can only continue hoping, wishing, longing, for a little more magic, a little more beauty to fill my every day.