59 EVIE
E VIE
Anytime I feel stuck, or like the rest of my life is a foregone conclusion and that no more mystery remains, just one day blending into the next, I think of that night—the night that Carter walked back into my life.
The way I’d have never in a million years imagined it would go.
The thought of me walking out the door that evening, as I so often did, with my keys in my hand, and then twelve hours later, arriving back home with Carter magically back in my world.
And I remember that we never quite know what might happen and the delightful surprises the universe can give us if we’re open to them.
Sometimes I sit outside and watch as the sun is setting across a coral sky, while the breeze picks up strands of my hair and birds have begun to quiet, and I find myself in awe.
Not of the beauty but of the vastness of it all.
There have been so many times when I found myself so low over these years that I thought I might never manage to get up again—curled into my constricted chest over a heart that is so closed, it couldn’t possibly learn to open again, let alone receive love or give it.
But then I see the way the last rays of the sun shoot off in every direction across the sky from a single point of light, and I realize something:
Each moment is like that. A sun. A star.
A miraculous point from which unlimited bands of light shoot outward to places and paths much farther than we could ever see.
So much of the time, the stories in my head have taken over—stories of loss and stories of hopelessness and the belief that every bright thing in my life was behind me and that nothing was left to dream of.
But then I would see those rays of light as infinite possibilities.
If it’s possible that tomorrow could be sad, then perhaps it’s equally possible that it could be joyful.
Equally possible that something wonderful could happen.
Something that surprises me. Something that reminds me that the universe hasn’t forgotten about me.
Something that shows me that every day, there is .
.. at least ... the possibility that something miraculous, however large or small, will come from this single moment in time.
Probability can be a little too hard to believe in sometimes. But possibility is enough.
And so I focus hard on that single point and don’t look further. That way, all the possibilities remain, and I somehow stay in the light.
I sound like him talking right now, just so you know.
I don’t explain it as well as he would, but I hope you understand.
Because just like I did that day, you woke up this morning thinking your life is a predictable series of days, and I know you’re feeling stuck.
But this is one of those unexpected moments when it’s about to change in ways you never could have imagined.
When I think of you as a little girl, Lainey, I so often remember coming downstairs after tucking Lucas into bed in the evenings and finding you sitting at the piano.
The room would be nearly dark except for the pale golden glow of the music lamp.
Far beyond your years, you would be so focused on the pages in front of you that usually you wouldn’t even notice me standing in the doorway watching you.
Existing safely in the quiet of your life, in pale-purple ballerina pajamas and slippered feet that didn’t yet reach the pedals.
I’d watch the expression on your face, the intensity at just nine years old, the perfectionist’s drive to get the sonatina just right.
The angle of your chin and your long, dark hair.
You are your father’s daughter in every detail.