even a loss / twenty-eight thousand days…

My son is learning words.

I wonder what he is learning from everything I haven’t put into words yet.

The way I respond when something doesn’t work. Whether I can be disappointed and still be kind. Whether there is room for him in a day when I am carrying a question I haven’t been able to answer.

I’ve spent years trying to build things I believe in. Some have worked. Some have taken me back to the beginning. There are losses that hardly anyone knows about, and I can still feel the effort that went into them.

I’m beginning to notice how that changes the way I see an attempt. I can recognize the work in something that didn’t turn out the way someone hoped. I know a little more about what it might have asked of them to try.

I want my son to know that part of me, too. The person who cares enough to make the attempt, and who is still learning what to do when caring doesn’t produce the result.

I hope I can give him something useful through the way I live with that. Patience with himself. Respect for someone else’s effort. Permission to reconsider a dream without feeling that the years before it were wasted.

I’m still the guy who keeps hoping. There’s a lot I haven’t figured out about how to carry that hope well.

For now, I’ve turned the camera on again.

twenty-eight thousand days…
even a loss

The complete third film is attached below. Come sit with it for a few minutes.

Music: “Wildflowers” and “A Kind of Hope” by Scott Buckley — CC BY 4.0. Music excerpts edited.
https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/wildflowers/
https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/a-kind-of-hope/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Keyboard recording: “IBM M2 sound” by Anonimski — CC0, edited.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_M2_sound.ogg