Looking back on the past week is like peering into a kaleidoscope, one lovely image melting into another before I have time to process them.
A walk on a spring evening beside a West Virginia river is replaced by a conference room. The psychiatrists and therapists cry and blow their noses as they listen to the story of my infant son’s surgeries and the legacy of trauma it created. Those people fade away, and I am eating pizza with family gathered for my son and almost daughter-in-law’s wedding. The next few days are a blur of more family arriving, watching my sister arrange flowers, using her kitchen to fix meals for out-of-town guests, decorating the hall for the reception, and going out to supper after the rehearsal.
The pictures in the kaleidoscope of my mind tumble and dissolve. But one picture never changes. The love on the faces of my son and his bride during the wedding ceremony never wavers. His eyes are soft and wet with tears. She smiles at him with an unfaltering gaze.
I see their faces while I walk this spring morning – in every leaf full of the promise, in every flower bud plump with beauty. A glorious sunrise greets me at the top of our hill, and in its glow I see two lovely faces. The kaleidoscope stops tumbling. For a moment, I can not breathe for the joy pressing upon my heart. I am home.
And so, I know, are my son and his new wife.
