This morning--the second morning after the storm raged through St. Louis leaving 500,000 without electricity in 100 degree weather, including my brother Micah and his wife Karma, who slept on the couches here at my parent's house, not to mention my parent's completely booked bed and breakfast--I went to the city park to run.
As I ran, I looked around at the many fallen trees and branches lying helpless and deadening on the ground. Branches and smaller handfuls of leaves lay unattached, littering the path. The clean-up crew hadn't come yet.
I hopped over the small branches and thought about next year, how unless you were here and saw what the storm took from these many sky-stretching trees, you probably wouldn't even know there once had been more.
I thought about how I must appear to most people a year after a tempest ripped my life apart. And how if you met me now, you may not realize that I used to be a different kind of tree. After my friends and family picked up the branches and scattered leaves, I probably looked pretty normal. But I know where my branches used to be and what leaves I'm still missing, even if passers-by don't see it.
I continued running my five miles this morning, watching the ground closely for branches that might trip me up, staring at the path. And I remembered last summer when I'd see discarded Cheerios on this very path, dropped by Miranda as my mom or dad strolled her as I ran, and remembered how I smiled seeing them--just picturing her sticky little fingers jabbing fistfuls of Cheerios at her mouth, dropping most of them. And despite all the branches and leaves, the path seemed awfully empty this year. One year later.
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