ILLUMINATE MISSION

Pause now to Create. The Memories will Last You a Lifetime

What you sow, you will reap

I looked at the bunch of old miscellaneous papers that I had sitting in one corner of the floor in my bedroom. They’ve been there for a few weeks now, I think, but I hardly noticed. To busy, too busy!

Then I started calculating. Hemming and hawing, a gasp escaped me.

A year ago, the younger of my sons moved from home to be closer to his workplace. Those papers have lain there undisturbed for that long? Oh my goodness! Let me tell it to you from the beginning.

In that move all my son had to carry was one large suitcase loaded with books and things he wasn’t going to be able to live without. The case was heavy. Seeing the opportunity as a great chance to go see his apartment I talked to my husband.

“That suitcase is way too heavy,” was my initial remark. “Besides, we might not get an invite to his place for a long time.” I was pushy. Sheesh, I wanted to see my boy’s apartment.

“Tashika — ‘you make a good point,’ ” my husband told me in Japanese. And so it was that the wheels for going were set in motion.

As one who thrives on minimalism and steers clear of wasting precious resources such as gasoline for the drive, I hurriedly offered my son that he take one or two pieces of furniture for his new place.

“You mean that Mom?” he asked and I saw the five-year-old boy look in his eyes.

“Yeah. Anything. What would you like?” I really wanted him to have one or two pieces of anything that would remind him of home, you see? I’d replace later or do without.

My son chose. Out went the things that had lived in the furniture. We loaded the family car and off we went…

So today, finally noticing the eye-sore, I got to organizing the papers that have sat in my blind spot for a year. Out of the paper jambalaya pile, I found an old thank you letter written in my dear mother’s beautiful cursive handwriting. Inside her letter was my extra copy of a cassette tape that I had made and sent to her.

Mom had been hospitalized with a face burn and I couldn’t be by her side. My siblings helped to look after her; my contribution then, like all the other times, was covering all her medical expenses.

It was the least I could do and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

On that occasion, in lieu of my absence, my children and I taped karaoke songs, poems, conversations, and get-well messages for her to listen as she recovered.

Today, I don’t have a cassette player in the house and I might never be able to listen to that old thing we created. But that it existed and made my mother happy — she says so in the old letter — that spontaneous act of kindness has stirred happy memories in me.

Those memories still exist now; my kids will not remember. They exist in me, and all because I took a moment out of my busy life to create something purposeful and loving with my children.

Of the pile, that precious letter and old tape are the only things I’m keeping.

THANK YOU FOR READING I Wish You Miracles