freedom

I've thought a lot about what freedom means. It isn't quite the same definition as when I was younger. But it holds a lot of weight with my memories of youth. Because youth is freedom and freedom is learning to let your youth color your future.

Freedom is.....

yelling out the car window that you love macaroni and cheese

telling the first boy you love that you love him in a Bank Plus parking lot with fireworks behind you

eating a giant cinnamon roll with frosting as thick as your shell and forgetting about the calories

running down the airport "hill" and tripping on pants too long for you

picking blueberries in a suburban neighborhood in jackson, mississippi, and crushing on your neighbor in his baseball cap and too-loose shorts

college and learning everything about yourself that you thought you weren't, coming to grips with reality and learning to forgive yourself for the years of mistakes

hearing about a friend's passing and letting yourself grieve, really grieve, snot and tears down the sleeve, sympathy cards at Kroger and knowing it isn't enough

airports and hotels and the way that cabs smell....the way traveling ruffles your hair and gnaws at your skin and begs you to forget everything else for one moment.

freedom is the way we look each other in the eye, the way we speak, the touch of a hand or the flick of the ankle. It is not knowing and wanting to know and trying to know and knowing still we cannot know. That life is fragile and incomplete and painful and erratic. But that it can be beautiful and significant and kaleidoscopic and unpredictable and full of grief and longing and ecstasy and remorse, full of nostalgia and belonging and loneliness and everything in between. Freedom is life and life is cloudy. We don't know what to do, but we keep doing our best. Freedom is learning to do your best. Freedom is forgiving yourself when that doesn't happen. Freedom is strength and grace and all the chaos that threatens to tear them apart.