m u s i n g : :

three., a photo by urban.prairie.forest. on Flickr.

my oldest was just barely one year old. we had recently moved to the pacific northwest & called a little apartment home. i was reading a novel, setting WWII & had just watched 'life is beautiful. our home was near an army/ air force base and planes would zoom by at all hours of the day or night. my dream life was crazy, still can be (like that tattoo Will Smith was going to give me a few weeks ago. wow). i remember waking up to the screaming burst of a middle of the night flight and getting caught betwixt dream life & real. i would wake up shaking, hovering over my baby, thinking we were in hiding wondering if we'd be caught.

enter our secret family code. what would i do if we were separated? if we found ourselves in a concentration camp with no way to communicate? how could we tell one another, you are loved!

three.
three knocks.
three winks. three taps.
three of anything would be our way of saying 'i love you.'

immediately we started implementing our little code. three squeezes of a held hand in mine. three crackers for a snack (and then three more and three more...). three of anything meant i love you. we would say it with words and we would say it without.

once, on a very sad & stormy day the wind ceased & all the leaves stopped falling. time stopped, my view was clear & suddenly three leaves fell, one. . .two. . .three. a lull and storm started up again. i took it as a message from something greater than i, that i was loved. regardless of circumstance or outcome or all the hurt in the world, little ol' me was cared about in that moment. the hurt i felt, the experiences i went through, the things that rocked me mattered.

our secret code isn't so secret any more & when we look, the message is often being shouted from the rooftops.

look around.

you. are. loved.