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You don’t know me. I mean, you might actually know me, but chances are, you don’t. Which is great. That’s kinda what this whole thing is about. If you want to know me, you should know what I am about. What makes me tick. What motivates me.
Today’s a Sunday. I’m traveling in the opposite direction of my wife and kids to be with some other family and then to spend a few days apart from any family doing some work. When I’m moving in this direction, I tend to get reflective. I’ve wanted to write this post for a while, but then 3 things happened in two days that reminded me again, so here we are. Here’s what I am about:
Stopped at a traffic light yesterday, I noticed a telephone pole with 20-30 layers of the same advertisement stapled to it. One after another, the same ad. Torn, replaced, stapled, torn, replaced, stapled. Over and over again. You could see the worn wood of the telephone pole through the center of the sinkhole of yellowing paper ads. I chuckled to myself, thinking how beautiful it looked. I looked over at my wife to tell her about it, and she was starting at it too. She noticed it at the same time as me, and also found this totally strange and mundane thing beautiful.
My daughter had her first slumber party at our house with a friend who used to be her classmate. She’s five years old. While she and her friend were playing, I walked into my room and noticed that my three year old son was sitting on my couch, looking out the window. I laid on the couch next to him, he snuggled into my arms, and we stared at the gentle breeze moving the trees for ten minutes. We told each other what we liked about it.
Recently, my wife and I were fortunate enough to buy our first home. It’s a big and strange house, over 100 years old, mysterious and graceful in its way. It has multiple screened-in porches. The front yard gets a lot of sun. As we’ve settled in, my wife and I have been planning how to landscape around the house - it could use some work. Talking to a friend in the neighborhood who had recently done something similar, they were frustrated to find out that growing a decent hedge takes about five years. That amount of time sounded just about perfect to me.
I think you know me a little bit better now, or at least you know what I think I’m about, at 35 years old, on September 13, 2015.
Thanks for reading.