Lest We Find Gold

by Melanie Schwapp

My feet have healed and I walk through a beautiful world just because you were once in it.

“Loud people have quiet soul,” Grandma used to say.

“Milly, be careful, you know. Be careful who you tek off your clothes for . . . some people tek your soul with them.”

I realize that some people wear their mess on the outside, with their sweaty breasts and feta cheese houses, while the rest of us wear it on the inside, till we vomit it out.

I use my own debris to create . . . magnificent flavours . . . magnificent stories. . . .

“What unpredictable about life? We have life and we have death. What unpredictable ‘bout that? I think we know exactly what life bring. Everyting we do, we know the road it lead to. Is when we don’t accept the road that we think it’s unpredictable.”

“Yes, Monty . . . we are married, but we in two completely different marriages. You married to a faithful, beautiful, perfect woman . . . and I married to a cheatin’, abusin’ asshole!”

You know, someone once said that it’s funny, how we use the word ‘just’ to represent something so huge and so significant! . . . like when a young child is nervous about something, and we may say . . . JUST be yourself.

Milly showed me that in ‘finding yourself’, it’s not always about finding who you are, but in re-learning WHO YOU ARE NOT

She taught me that to find the safe place in a darkened room is not to walk where the furniture is, but to find where it is not.

Maybe, just maybe, in finding ourselves, we have to shed the things we believe about ourselves, shed the things that the worl...

In the class with the four year olds, when the question of “who was the strongest” was asked – they all shouted ‘ME!’ and flexed their little muscles. Later, when the class of eight year olds were asked the same question . . . they all pointed to someone else. The world had gotten to them. The world had started to define them.

we are all just enough.