Selectric I

My mind wanders, it always has.  Allowed a bit of breathing room away from tasks that demand focus, it skips off in any, in every direction.  It returns with its apron full of found objects, its pockets stuffed with memories that resemble life forms.   Every particle has a story to tell.

A reconditioned IBM Selectric I was the Christmas gift from my former and late husband just two months after our son was born.  Because of it I was able to do "office quality" typing at home and hold a part-time job that allowed me to take my infant son to work with me for nearly a year.  Some of the job involved random errands around Hollywood, some of it let me sit in our tiny dining area and type.  Where my mind wandered earlier this week was to admiration for whatever inspired him to choose that present at that time and gratitude for all the hours of my boy's young months that I didn't miss by being at work.  I don't recall ever being given a more perfect gift.

We just never know.  About much of anything.  We follow what wisdom we can access or allow ourselves to be guided by low-voiced nudgings, at times assuming we know what the outcome will be or trusting that intuition is better at keeping the car on the road than we are.

Things come together, they do, in spite of us, against seemingly great odds.  One of the kindnesses we can offer ourselves is looking back with gratitude, with wonder at the way the stars aligned.  I choose to believe that thankfulness felt and expressed, even if just into the unknowable vastness of it all, is not wasted or lost.  Either it reaches, impossibly, its target or it is distributed among the needy, manifesting suddenly in some hurting heart as a sense of connection.  The universe of my understanding will never allow scatter-sown gratitude to go unused.

On the day I received the Selectric, I was pleased to be known so well, to be seen.  I was joyful and filled with appreciation.  All these years later, the insight behind that present stills me.  I have thought these same thoughts before, yet they seem to have ripened and deepened.  Now they bring me to tears.  Time, what an unexpected ally,  thank you.  And thank you again, GK, for the typewriter.