How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

– Walt Whitman

My AP English teacher gave me Leaves of Grass as a gift when I was sixteen. She inscribed in it “You, of all the others in class, will get this Whitman. He so easily finds beauty in things – as I feel you always do in your writing.” Those words meant so much to me – they still do.

Thinking of her and how I would sit in my room late at night reading poetry brings me tears of gratitude. I spent a great deal of my time at night curled under heavy layers of blankets reading Whitman. It was so cold in my room my fingers would numb, but I could not put the book down. I cried the first time I read the poem above. The pages are worn soft to the touch and faint pencil marks abound where I underlined passages. The book sat on my dorm room shelf, on the bedside table of my first marriage, on the coffee table in my California stucco home and now it resides in my home in the mountains of Virginia. 

California is on my mind. We just returned from an amazing trip. The natural beauty abounds. To share that beauty with our nephew, Joseph, who is now sixteen was something I had hoped for, but honestly did not know would ever happen. But it did.

Every moment we share is a miracle.

We walk the cliffs of Manchester to watch the sun set. A bay leaf rubbed between my fingers wafts nature’s perfume in the air. Tide pools full of lime green anemones are below us and salt spray in our hair. Tonya crouches in the golden grass with camera in hand. I look over to my brother. He and Joseph stand close to each other as the warm light spills across their faces. Genuine happiness is upon my brother’s brow and the deep love between a father and son washes over me. To me every hour, every day, every moment is a miracle, but this moment, well it was a long time coming. I squeeze Ben’s hand, he sees it too.

Every moment we share is a miracle.