Messages Up Above

Sometimes life is full of wonderfully simple surprises.

Yesterday my wife and daughters visited me at the office to take me out for lunch. Since we will be apart for the remainder of the week, it was our desire to maximize family time and going home for lunch or an early dinner yesterday was simply not in the cards. When they arrived at my office, I was in a conference room and I was not able to immediately say hello or to hug and kiss them as I do. But, as meetings eventually do, my delay from them ended and off to lunch I went. But first, I was a man on a mission for phone messages and a glance at my email. Apparently never did I lift my head. After lunch, it was the same story, head down and mission critical I remained. Sadly and in the heat of the tasks at hand, looking beyond my desk seemed to be something that was not a necessary part of my day.

This morning I dropped Bonnie and the girls off to catch their flight so that they could visit Bonnie's Uncle on Cape Cod. On the the way back to my office my car lacked the joyous sound it had minutes ago and immediately I felt a void. As I was half-way to the office, my daughter Isabella called me and asked me if I had seen her message. "Message. what message?" She referred to one she left yesterday and asked me to look "all around". When I got back to the pressure pit, I rifled through my desk looking for a mystery note from her. There was no note from her on my desk and confusion set in but with her now on a plane, I went about my day.

A short time later my assistant walked in and remarked on the sweet message Isabella had left me yesterday. I raised my hands and shrugged my shoulders and said...."Where the hell is this note?" She pointed towards the window on the far side of my office and my eyes focused on the foggy light. The note was found.

My daughters have this ability to be with me even when we are apart and they always bring me back to earth. When Isabella was three, I regularly found stuffed animals of hers buried deeply in my travel bags. Those stuffed animals evolved to emailed pictures of her and her sister and of the dogs taken with her mother's borrowed cell phone. Next came quite detailed phone calls just prior to turning to bed. And finally and recently there have been texts. But the erasable presentation board marker on my window yesterday takes her messaging to a higher level. When I saw it, my eyes may have been nearly 40 stories above the ground but my heart was in the clouds.

There were other images of my day. Some were quite decent and worthy of posting if blip were simply a matter of technical pursuit. Yet none of the others made my heart dance like this one. After all, my life is first and foremost a matter of the heart.

Thank you Isabella, I love and miss you and your sis and your Mom.

The writing is a bit more viewable in large. And I did not bother to process this but I did shoot it in the mono setting on the Nikon.