The things I know

I miss my dog. He died three months ago this week. The ache for that lost relationship is a raw and hollowed burn in my chest. I know I'm in Haiti- that I wouldn't be with him right now were he alive- but he'd be at home- with my mother on Monday nights when my dad is out of town. With my father on early walks to bandy field. my family. I don't think it matters where somebody is, when you lose a member of your family, you feel it all around.

I'm homesick for missing thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. My father turns 61 the week after and celebrates his first year of full throttle vegetarianism. If I were home, I, who shamelessly disbanded from vegetarianism after 6 months and ushered in the phrase of my mothers, ' I have vegetarian tendencies...' Well, if I were home I would eat turkey inches from his face. And I could be there with them. Because I know they miss him too. In some ways more than me. He was my dog, but he was their companion when Brie was in dc and when I went to college and then to Spain.

I always want to be moving forward. Families grow. New generations and traditions. We cling to the past but we have to embrace the future. Am I afraid of growing up?

Maybe so, but I don't want to be my younger self again.The past is full. Of cherished memoirs and excruciating heart break. Of losing loved ones and welcoming new.

It speaks of joy, not sorrow, I think, to have nostalgia for the past. And it's perfectly fine, if it is coupled with a healthy dose of excitement for the future.

Here, in Haiti, I think these thoughts are lavish ones. That I can spend my evening writing down thoughts about growing up, about pain and joy, about turkey.

The point is, none of us really know.

The way to go about it. This one life.

And in the quiet of the night, moonlight casting shadows on my walls, and mountain air cascading through the window, I think that this is what I know:

Of all the things we don't know,

In the past present and future. In the joy and sorrow. Whether we're getting everything else entirely wrong. Whether we missed the boat on every other thing.

There is love. And I know it.

I knew it then, I know it now, and I will know it when we all meet again.