I bought him his first piece of luggage last month as we rolled one, oversized shopping cart through IKEA. He spread his hands out and wrapped four small fingers around the bright orange handle.
"This one."
He keeps sliding books and bent cars into the sides and pockets.
And this open suitcase gets piled higher with broken toys and pens without caps and I harness restraint and curve back into patience.
We leave tomorrow. Two weeks and golden light, feet dangling softly on an island's clay shore. Lost canoe paddles and spontaneous cliff jumps. There will be quiet and bird calls memorized and soft morning breathing in bunk's scratchy comforters. There will be gentle rain tapping and too high swinging.
I lost the video almost three years ago, shortly after I sent it to the person I love, this person I dreamed of as I made it. There, with one old camera and unsteady hands. Because this person's hills were too steep and sometimes the road can be lifted by one song's note. Sometimes the moon calls us back just as the clouds pull the curtain closed.
And as I packed and cleaned and shuffled four new journals alongside his red goggles and save-it-for-later candy wrappers, it was there. He found it.
And a four-years-ago memory, the little video I made with unsteady hands, under clouds that travelled past question marks and "I miss you" greeting card longing was found. And a door, made silent somewhere in my heart, was opened again. Just to remind me that promises are kept if we keep them folded inside the deep pockets of hope.
They are four years older now, these little ones. Four years past wrinkles and showers of thunderous days. They stand in a new spring, grown tall in the wild weeds.
music: sufjan stevens, "sister"
