Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The Door to a Story

I look at the door. It’s not even a door I know. It’s a picture I used in a story.

But the story was real and so close to me. It was a story between my child’s journey from high school to college. Now he’s about to leave college. How quickly four years goes by. He’s a man, not the teenager, who caused his mother to explain how to empty the trash one more time, who told his mother she was doing it wrong when she dared to do so.

Past that door is a pile of memories and pictures, images in my mind of a child growing, laughing, crying with the frustration of meeting the world head on. Head on is how he challenged everything he met. Head on he made his way with his heart on his sleeve, under a cuff of bashfulness. Head on he went, as if he knew one day he would be taller than his mom by an inch. Every memory tells that story bit by bit, tear by tear, smile by smile.

We wrote it together as a family.

Looking at that picture brings it all home to me.
−me strauss Letting me be

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

We wrote it together as a family.

As someone without a family of my own, I find that these are the words that touch me most deeply.
You are so blessed to have a pile of memories and pictures and images of the 3 of you growing, laughing and crying together. In a family, the spotlight often shines on just one at a time, but it's always about the whole. We just remember things differently.

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

The part of a family most family members miss when they look at just the pictures is that each member represents a part of their personal historu. something that cannot be changed or taken away. That's why families are so importam. That's why they define us so deeply.

Tell No One said...

Head on is how a person meets the world when they were never put in a box. You are a wonderful Mom with a wonderful Son. Everything I see and read are thoughts and ideas that a person has seen first hand, what a wonder to grow up with Imagination and Love like that.

Katrina

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

Katrina,
Everything about love is hard and wonderful, just as life is. Our choice is to go through the door and experience it our stay outside and watch as others do. I've done both in the most extreme ways. I chose to live and love.

I love you.