Two Places At Once

They say you can’t be in two places at the same time. Like so many errors, that knowledge is based on fact and not experience. I know this is true because I have been in many places at once. The other day, for instance, I was lying on top of the stone wall of a small bridge that spanned a creek. It was along the Old Harrisburg Pike just outside Lancaster, Pa. As the warmth of the sun bathed my body I could feel sunbeams resting on my legs from the bottom of my cut off jeans to the top of my black high-top sneakers. My spindly thirteen-year-old arms poked through what used to be a white t-shirt, now gray and tatty after being worn all summer; washed only from the creeks and rivers I visited. As I lay on the bridge, I knew I was also someplace else, running room to room in my grandmother’s big house knowing I could stop anywhere for a hug or to ride a knee, or feel a huge hand tousle my hair and call me ‘beautiful boy’. As certain as I was that I was there on that bridge that day savoring the sunlight, I was also there savoring the love in that big house. Now, I am here with you as you read this. The truth is, I am in all places where the human heart knows love as I have known it. I can be in much more than two places at one time. I can be in all places where there is warmth and love. The tears I cry through recollections are not tears of loss, they are tears of recognition. I recognize now that I am present in all places of love. It is my home. These places are in me forever, they are in us all. we have but to look for them. So, those who say you cannot be in two places at once are wrong. You can be in two places at the same time. You can be in all places at the same time. One day you will be. They are also wrong about something else. They say: “you can never go home again”, but, you can go home again. Each day we are traveling a road that leads us home together. it is the most beautiful journey we will ever take.