A Step Away

When I was a little girl growing up in the woodlands of Maine, my mom would squirt a small amount of Joy dish soap and water into a cup and give me a plastic straw and I’d take it outside our apartment in Charleston and dump a good part of it on the grass, as the ground needed a fair amount of preparation for the pointy ends of the grass not to pierce my intended creation. I’d sprawl out and rest my straw in the soap, forming an amazing array of rainbow hues atop a lush carpet of deep green.

But, as moments of joy do end, I vividly remember my dismay in discovering that all bubbles die, after what appeared to me a very short life. I remember watching each iridescent bubble, with the forever-hope of a young child, that this one would not follow the same course as all the others. But alas, the empty black holes always emerged as if tiny cancers in my bubbles—ever growing, always consuming—as is the fate of all bubbles amongst the demands of time and circumstance. Would that I might find the secret to eternal bubbles—never dying—always remaining, but then, what would I do with them all? And who am I do assume such a lofty position? Did not each bubble fulfill their intended purpose in existing that I might have wonder and delight in their creation? And finally, would the thrill of the bubble be dimmed, if bubbles never burst—popping into frothy mists and dissipating back into the earth?

What do I take for granted now that if it were suddenly gone, I’d mourn the loss of?

What is life, if not iridescent, fragile bubbles of life and love, forever dissipating into the annals of time?

Ah-but herein I know the secret! Life and love in all its wonder is and always will be eternal in nature and substance. It might appear to “die” as mortal does, but what waits on the other side has existed from before the beginning of time. We return back, from whence we came—this place called heaven—is home, but a step away.

Per chance might I find my bubbles there?