Backpacks, the hoped-for, the in-between and the now-here.
I could go back and check the date, but I would guess that backpack was in my cupboard for about 18 months. I had one like it, and Edson loved it. He’d put it on, walk about, pull all my stuff out of it and put his stuff in. And so I decided he needed one of his own, for that day that seemed so far off, but that I think I always knew would happen - the day he came to live with me forever. I loved the beauty of it, the mirror image of it, that by buying one backpack, two kids would get the chance to have a bag all their own to move out of their home with. And so in there it stayed, even when mine broke - I powered through until I could get a replacement, because that one was his. There was something about it, almost sacred, holding space, all through the in-between. Some small show of faith that I truly believed it would happen - in God’s timing, not mine - but one day he would come home. One day the hoped-for would become the now-here. It sat there, through the mo