MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
KISS THE WIND<\/p>\n
When I was six years old, my father tiptoed into my bedroom\u00a0one morning before sunup and whispered in my ear, \u201cGet up and dress warm. I\u00a0have a surprise for you.\u201d He left my room and headed down the staircase to the\u00a0garage. I jumped out of bed, put on a pair of corduroy pants, a heavy\u00a0sweatshirt, and in a few minutes, I climbed into the passenger seat of his\u00a0Studebaker.<\/p>\n
Where are we going?\u201d I asked as he started the engine.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the airport,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we going on a plane?\u201d I had never flown anywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. There\u2019s going to be a solar eclipse at 6:14. When the\u00a0sun starts to come up, the moon is going to cover it and it\u2019ll get dark again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moon is jealous. It has to disappear every morning and\u00a0it wants extra attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was still dark when we arrived at the airport. We walked\u00a0over to a hilly rise. A few other adventurous souls milled around in the
darkness. I resented their presence, I wanted to be alone with my father so I\u00a0pretended they weren\u2019t there. I held his hand tightly. pressing into his spongy\u00a0thumb pad, feeling it fill back out and pressing it down again. I looked up at\u00a0him while we waited. He was a magical person. As a faint glow appeared along\u00a0the horizon, lighting up the edges of the world, my father\u2019s upturned face\u00a0became a dark silhouette against the lit up heavens. Then the darkness\u00a0appeared. I reached my arms up to the sky, stretching out my fingers toward the
magic that was happening. When the sky lit up again, my father and I smiled at\u00a0each other. \u00a0<\/p>\n
On our way back home, my father explained light years to me.\u00a0I tried to understand.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many light years away was the eclipse?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know honey. But it won’t happen again for seventy\u00a0years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll be pretty old by then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will. A lot more than a hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you still have hair?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be white.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow about your eyes? Will you be able to see?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy glasses will be thick.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, don\u2019t worry. I\u2019ll drive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When I was old enough to sit still for twenty minutes, my\u00a0father took me to the local planetarium to gaze at thousands of stars projected
onto the domed ceiling. When the show was over, we ran up the stairs, taking\u00a0them two at a time, and peered into the telescope that allowed us to view the\u00a0planets. My father was just so energetic. He would toss me in the air and when\u00a0he put me back down, we ran together and kissed the wind. He always looked like\u00a0he was about to break out into a smile. His laughter was contagious and he\u00a0cracked up my mother who was a very serious person. He made people smile in\u00a0hospital rooms. In temples during boring sermons. He told me that the light is\u00a0always there. It may be behind the clouds or the moon, but it eventually comes\u00a0out to play. He said that if I paid attention, I could find the magic in\u00a0everything.<\/p>\n
Today. even amidst pandemics, unprovoked wars and people
believing crazy things, I remember to look for the magic. Flowers still open\u00a0their scented blossoms. Unexpected acts of kindness still appear. People still\u00a0smile when there\u2019s nothing to smile about and help each other when it seems\u00a0like all is lost.<\/p>\n
We live in a world of duality. Good and evil. Happy and sad.\u00a0In the Philippines, most of the healers were born and raised in the same province\u00a0where people practiced voodoo and other dark arts. The Mayans discovered that in the\u00a0wild,\u00a0every poison grows beside\u00a0its antidote, like \u201cjewelweed\u201d that grows a short distance from\u00a0 poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. The antidote \u201chorsetail plant\u201d grows very near \u201cstinging nettle.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not suggesting that we turn away from reality and\u00a0pretend everything is okay. It isn\u2019t and that\u2019s not what my father taught me.
He lived in the real world, he had compassion and he understood that people\u00a0suffer but he worked hard to avoid getting stuck in the tough places. He knew\u00a0how to find his way back to what was okay. He didn\u2019t teach me these things in\u00a0words or in books. He taught me to find the magic by example and when I laugh\u00a0out loud, I can see him smiling back at me and kissing the wind.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG KISS THE WIND When I was six years old, my father tiptoed into my bedroom\u00a0one morning before sunup and whispered in my ear, \u201cGet up and dress warm. I\u00a0have a surprise for you.\u201d He left my room and headed down the staircase to the\u00a0garage. I jumped out of bed, put on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2097,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2096\/revisions\/2097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}