Pieces

Maybe I shouldn't have just taken the wedding cake topper from the shelf in my parent's basement without asking Sunday, but there it is. And there are my parents, at least symbolically, young and happy, before they built the house we're now emptying in a spot they used to picnic, before my brother was handed to my mom swaddled in a Christmas stocking, before I came along unexpectedly and against all odds 11 years later, before my mom's first cancer diagnosis, before my dad worked and then retired from 50 years of selling auto parts, before countless deaths and births, A+'s and failures, fights and forgivenesses, before thousands of meals around kitchen tables whose shapes might have changed through the decades, but whose position in the center of the kitchen remains the same to this day.

So many tiny pieces, big and small, fitting together one after the other until the larger image of a life is revealed. I wish I could take it apart and put it all back together again, more slowly this time, more familiar with what the final picture looks like.

It's almost my parent's 57th wedding anniversary. It's almost my 38th birthday. A red sun rose behind their cake topper this morning. It was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.