So, i bid farewell to Katharine and Sandy this evening. An aweful goodbye and one of those strange instances knowing that we will meet again someday. My single goal for the day was to simply take one picture with the girls. It was an epic fail and now they have boarded a train, so I apologize for the grainy photo's of the girls... maybe you'll spot them in there somewhere. But in the place of proper photo's, here is a simple love letter to my friends I drafted the other morning:
When I think on the person that I am not, yet that I wish to be more – I think of Sandy. I idolize those who seem to walk on air. Their steps are soft, the touch is tender, and in their presence you feel comfort. It's like those moments that your senses are tipped off to something familiar and your minds races back in time to a place of great joy- like the scent of cider in the midst of a cold winters day and instantly the memories of Christmas Eve, sleeping on the bare floor of our families soon to be finished home in the mountains of Tehachapi. Too eager to wait for the adornments; the fresh carpet or painted trim, as children we simply new we needed to be home and we needed to be together. So, the family piled into the bottom level floor and the room with the finished fireplace in order to welcome Christmas and our extravagantly dressed tree of homemade ornaments. That is joy and the fresh scent of cider will always beckon me back to this night and the love of family.
Sandy is like that. Being around her is easy and I think I crave it. She is that smell of home that no other building can capture perfectly and the overwhelming peace that paralyzes the body when you’ve embraced family after a long time away. Sandy is in India; it is her epic journey after completing nursing school and in a year of dynamic transition. The Mother House was a place she knew she must go, serve, and maybe even be inspired to Go, to have some of the blanks filled in, in that mental manual of how to live life that each of us writes each day. I don’t know if those answers have come, but what I do know is that wherever Sandy goes, wherever she is led, someone will find home in her. She is quiet, yet strikingly hilarious in her critique on life and living.
And then there is Katharine. I think it is almost a blessing that we don’t live near one another… cause man would we get in trouble. We are similar, like those partners in crime that make life worth living, that seem to make colors brighter and sweets richer because of their energy, because of their laughter. Katharine is a dreamer; she is a penny Tosser into the wishing well. The good in things are exemplified and the bad seem to be swept under the mat to be dealt with another day, a day that usually does not come. You know those people that have that rare gift to make you feel special, like you come to understand those intimate characteristics of why you are so endearing simply because that person is not afraid or ashamed to tell you how wonderful you are… that’s Katharine.
Katharine is an organic farmer in the Okanagan Valley of BC. She has paved a path all her own, without the checklist standards of what makes a young adult worthy or a proven asset. Katharine, I will see you again this year and we will run through the fields of the valley.
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