Sunday, March 23, 2008

how far away

"i am still enchanted
by the light you brought to me.
i listen through your ears
and through your eyes i can see..."

when you first fall in love, every song takes on new meaning. i've been experiencing that since yusuf came along and put taher and i under his spell. the above lyric just seems to be exactly what goes on these days- yusuf staring at the world around him with such intensity and such curiousity that i imagine his brain must be experiencing sensory overload.

it must be hard work, being a baby. he can't take anything for granted and can't look at anything without trillions of connections being made in his brain. sometimes i'm not surprised he just wants to sleep. or cry :)

the other day, as i drove into the city, i could see the chicago skyline before me, and it made me think of a sight that once was familiar to me. when i lived in cairo, on a clear day you could see the outlines of the two larger pyramids on the horizon. they were a 30 minute drive away and yet the two perfect triangles seemed so tangible and so stark. i grew to think of this sight at the "Cairo skyline", and i would remember fondly the chicago one.

the other day, then, seeing the chicago skyline, i was reminded how very much i considered cairo my second home. i had traveled far from everything familiar and found myself feeling very settled, very much a part of my surroundings. i glanced in the backseat at yusuf and wondered, one day, where will he go? what will he see? these days he is with me 24 hours a day, and if i am gone for a few hours, he is with taher. but one day he might travel far from us and become a part of a world i will only visit. he may make a second home in a city that i cannot begin to understand.

it's so strange that although right now he doesn't do anything with my knowing about it, the potential is already within him for an entire life. i wonder what he will do with it and i hope that no matter how far he travels, he will still look at his family and think, as i do, that there is home.

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