I didn’t plan this. It planned me. Piles and piles of things lovely and once-loved telling me to let them go…

My DNA is evident in the way my lips know how to round and pucker when I say Je t’aime…

Something I shared last week in this Journal made a friend of mine think that I am dying. I assure you; I am very much alive.

Two hundred and sixty-five. The number of once “must haves” now priced to become essential treasures in someone else’s life.

Can we admit that the thing that mesmerizes and haunts us is sometimes only really wanted in the chase?

I am sitting in a room absent of sawdust, devoid of paint cans and drywall, electrical wiring, and plumbing parts.

I arrive first and fold into the chair as if a bodyguard protecting me from something of which I’m not quite aware. Tentative at first, the whole of me sits in upright angles but soon I’m leaning all the way in, and warm conversation fills the air, like fresh grounds of the darkest blend, generous, luscious, permeating.

The flooding came on the heels of the cancer diagnosis, just as unwelcome and unexpected. And as a thousand strands of hair fell from my head, we began counting the losses adding floors and walls, framing and ceilings to the list.

I carry within me the stories. My people gave me brown eyes, long legs, and a prominent nose.

I believed until recently that absentmindedness was the reason I leave my keys on the checkout counter…

There were three of us—Artist. Professor. Chef. I proposed, “Of body, mind, or spirit, which drives the decisions of your days?”

I watched my mama take her last breath, then promptly walked to her bathroom to find her favorite French lipstick…

By the time I was in labor with my third son, I had given up any romanticized notion of a quiet room, lights dimmed low, soft music playing in the background. Throwing birthing plan aside, bringing another human into the world is an in-the-moment thing—internal, singular, rabidly solo, a sacrifice of the body to usher in this unearthly, extraordinary being.

I am here to worship, to set my spirit on something far bigger than myself. But the darkness makes me bold, and my voice begins to rise as if I am the center of this moment and this is my concert crowd.

Perfect darkness. Reinforced steel concrete walls measuring two feet thick. The inside is daunting, never mind the three-and-a-half foot wide steel clad combination door that gives access to the chamber within.

On the rare Saturdays when my mama would release me from my chores, we’d pile in my denim blue, ’63 VW convertible and head to the beach.

As a child I would join my friends and we’d run to the banks of the overflowing creeks just after the rain and catch crawdads.

You would think that a man on a mission would move quickly through the crowds.

“Dear Heavenly Father,” I start, and sentences so often refuse to form.

Sometimes I would sit right down in the middle of the dust and cry.