A few weeks ago, I opened an email from S titled "show this to momo". In the throes of his college finals, he had been left to care for sweet Tiny and Princess H. In the same situation, I expect I would have left them to a peanut butter sandwich and their own devices as I tapped away at one research paper or another. Instead, S set the dining room table (Ikea themed, of course), made pasta, and sat with them as they lolloped through their dinner. I played the video he sent of their meal just as a new tune started playing on my grooveshark, and the serendipitous combination left me dewy eyed and a little regretful. Oftentimes, my life moves around me while I sit doing something else. I mindlessly meander from now to another place -- a country where unfinished short stories, links to Wikipedia articles, and photos taken for someone else live. A lot of the time, I'm being kind of productive-ish. A lot of the time I'm not. Either way, I end up subordinating real things to less real things, which hollows my existence just a little bit.
Last night, near the start of a long drive home, Momo shut the engine and darkened the lights of our car in the middle of a crunchy mountain road. We sat silently in the rolled-down windows for awhile, staring uncomfortably at shooting stars streaking the magnificent black of the sky. Those minutes were so much more substantial than the ones I'm taking to write this blog post right now. Minutes spent sharing a meal or walking outside or sitting with someone in unbothered quietness have a weight to them. I want my life to be comprised of minutes like that.
