It's All About the Journey

He was a little thing. We both were, but he was the baby, so he was little for longer, the way I saw it. He also got any melanin that obviously skipped me in the family. He was my father's spitting image as a kid. He grew up to look much more like our mom's family, except his coloring. He had a mop of brown hair, curly, but thankfully not as curly as mine. He had those giraffe eyelashes that all boys get and all girls envy. I remember distinctly the color of our dad's eyes. Maybe age changed the color, but they weren't really brown. There was a lot of olive green in there. My Nanny's were the same way. My baby brother's eyes are dark brown. In the right light, you can't even see the pupils dark. All three of my dad's other kids got those dark eyes. I got the Payne eyes, according to my Nanny. She loved blue eyes. I'm certain that had something to do with her marrying my handsome Pawpaw. He was the first tornado in my family memory. We've had a co...

Life does not often bring you friends. Life brings you people. People who you meet at a party or at a concert or church or the grym. They're people you talk to you. You can talk about the weather, or theology, or your favorite music, or how you got to be so good at that one exercise. Easy conversations that you can have with anyone. Hardly deeper than the weather. Those people are easy people. Easy conversations. Easy acquaintance. Easily forgotten. You'll meet a million in your lifetime. You'll forget 999,853 of them. Then there are your once-in-a-lifetimes. You get maybe three of them. And that's if you're the sort of person with your antennae out for the biggest love in the room in every room you're in. Or if you're lucky enough to cross paths with someone else who has the heart antennae. And you'll know it when you feel it. Call it Fate or Lady Luck, or some magical casting of die. Whatever you want to call it, some of us get a Sarah. And you're ...