As The Days Grow Darker, We Are Each Small and Grand

My footsteps crunch in the snow, causing the only noise around. I breathe in. Out. Find myself standing on and of the earth, aware of my smallness and greatness. I stand taller, my shoulders more relaxed. “This is what I meant,” I said. Nobody but the puppy was there to witness. As the days grow darker, Colorado air is crispy. The air in Virginia gets crispier, too, of course, but there’s something about Colorado air, at least for me.

It feels like home. There’s probably a better way to describe it, but I suppose describing the way air feels as you breathe is like describing the scent of the ocean to somebody who’s never been. Your description comes close, but until they experience that particular scent themselves, your words can’t do justice to reality.

Standing in the Colorado air reminds me of perfect nights, which are never as perfect as they are in our memory.

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As the days grow darker, it’s impossible to not worry about those who stand under the stars, hoping for asylum in the United States. I think about them, standing in the dark, feeling small and grand. I imagine they wonder “Will we ever get there? Will we ever be safe?” while also thinking “Thank God we’re doing this. There was no other way, and one day, my children will tell our story of how we became free.”

There’s nothing more grand than risking everything to give your children a future. Small and large. We each tell the story of success and failure to ourselves each day.

We’re each small and grand. I wonder whether traveling so slowly brings them mindfulness of the changes in the air. Or whether their survival instincts are on such high-alert that such things remain unnoticed, a far-away second to finding water, food, foot-protection, and shelter for a few hours.

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It’s November, and the days are darker. It’s dark when we wake, and it’s dark when we share our dinner. It’s hard to not feel darker on the inside, too. My body is tired earlier than it was just weeks ago, when I had to shut the blinds in order to block the sun from the very seat I sit in now at the same hour.

Robert’s working a crazy schedule and is in bed by 7:30 p.m. Home around 5:30 or 6:00 p.m. It’s only for ten days, but as the days grow darker, we are each small and grand. I’m small for being angry that he’s not here when he’s here, but I know he’s working on grand things. It’s dark when he leaves. Dark when Tucker, the puppy, and I get up.

But it’s also a grand time. We’re in Colorado. With a new puppy named Nugget (!), and love, and a home we’re making ours after discovering not everybody is as grand as we are when turning over their keys.
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It’s November, and the days are darker in politics, but there’s hope in this upcoming election, I think. It’s hard to know. I saw a bunch of flyers today (junk mail addressed to our home’s former owner), and every single thing one particular flyer had bulleted out “Here’s a checklist of your candidates!” as a “yes” I thought “OMG no!!!!!”

And yet, I tell myself that we are each small and grand. Each one of us must have greatness too, right? We all stand under the stars, feel our feet on the earth, remember there are feet on the opposite side of the planet, living the best ways we can.

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The world feels smaller than it did to me a few years ago. But there is still incredible greatness and love, I promise. Only recently, I was able to witness it first-hand at the Be Beautiful, Be Yourself event. It was life-changing (not just because Colin Farrell touched me), and made the ridiculous and ignorant flyers I got in the mail today seem like maybe, people against humanity, will see humanity.

PSA: Whether you feel small or grand, please vote. And remember feeling small rather than grand when you do so, as that’s the way to change the world. Vote.

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This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post. This week’s prompt, brought to you by my co-host Kenya Johnson of Sporadically Yours and yours truly, is “As the days grow darker…”