A Vital Mission

I’m heading up to MA for a spell. I have a vital mission—a delicate assignment appointed to me by the angels and I’m certain that all of heaven will be watching and cheering. And that’s how it should be—packed stands of roaring fans, cheering on brave souls with holes in their shoes.

I grew up in MA, and each time I return I feel I’m on an archeological dig, searching for familial clues, finding bits and pieces of evidence scattered like chalky bones throughout the city. Home. Worcester MA, where I toddled the gritty sidewalks in my size twos, holding Ma’s hand, the church bells pealing out the years, stopping me mid-play to ponder life’s secrets: Will the world end in my lifetime? Can God see everything I do? Am I late for dinner? I was as deep as midnight—as awake as noon, my eyes always watching as the potter’s blade cut into the clay.

I’m not a pessimist or a realist; I’m a wakeful dreamer with both feet on the ground and a good eye for detail. I see the danger, the blood on the wall, but I also see the light. The irony. The humor. The Love.

From a distance life seems so simple, like theories placed in cotton-lined boxes, carried by cautious couriers—unbreakable. But reality chews holes in your theories, rarely offering you the consideration of a cotton-lined box. No. Life is nitroglycerin carried in your own trembling hands. The great experiment whose outcome is yet to be determined. And tremble we do. But is that so terrible? For our trembling bears witness to our desperate need for something greater than our frailties, and accompanies us as we surrender to the vastness within, where we are linked like DNA to our one true love.

Angels, I am honored to accept this assignment. Humbled actually. Ma, I’ll be there soon.