Normal, everyday life...

Dinner. I folded my burrito neatly trying keep the juices in the tortilla, all the while thinking about things other than the burrito. My two daughters were there, as was my wife, but strangely, I wasn't. I mean, yes, I was there physically, but my mind was focused on a fire raging in southern California, not a mile or two from a house owned by my niece. We had just been to her house last Friday to visit my sister, her mom, who was visiting from Maryland. Dragged from my reverie by a little disagreement at the table, I was surprised by my reaction. Life was normal. Nothing important, catastrophic, or even exciting was going on, just dinner. However, just a few miles south of our serene dinner table, my sister was packing the car, getting prepared, just in case the wild fires of 2007 intruded into their space. I had a hard time shaking images so ably shown on CNN; firefighters valiantly protecting a home, people cooling their heels in Qualcomm Stadium, airplanes dumping thousands of gallons on seemingly unquenchable flames. A hard time not seeing my sister's face in the sea of displaced home owners in SO Cal. Life was normal, everyday for us. Abnormal, once-in-a-lifetime-you-hope-never-happens for ten of thousands of our fellow Californians. That's life, it seems. Barely paying attention, life goes on in a seemingly endless parade of meetings, games, concerts, TV shows, holidays, birthdays and meals, until something not-so-everyday blows into our lives stealing our serene normalness and wake us from our dream. In an instant, I looked up and was immediately engaged by the people, my people eating burritos and fruit salad. At tha moment, some other, more favorable wind blew into my thoughts, bidding me to take in the joy of our basic, normal meal, with the the everyday people you love. Bon Appetit!