My Gift To You Today

Honey Bear looks up from her peanut butter jar.

Photo by Tina Lear

This is Honey Bear.
I visit her Mom regularly. We are writing partners. We sit on her front porch and pour ourselves into our laptops, inching forward on various literary endeavors, stopping every now and then to read aloud, reflect, revise, commiserate, and celebrate.

Honey Bear is with us on the porch, enjoying the last of what the peanut butter jar has to offer before it gets tossed into the recycle bin. She has a very long tongue. I silence my phone so I can take pictures without distracting her.

But she feels the energy of my focus and looks up.

This is my gift to you today, this moment.
Put it in your pocket and carry it around. It’s invisible but it’s real.
A split second of sweet communion with a living being who only knows the present, only expects to be loved, and who sees you back.

May this be a snapshot of the whole world someday.

Let’s accumulate as many of these moments as possible, noticing them, valuing enough of them till they become the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fire that warms us, and the ground we stand on.