It’s not always a new, bright shiny backpack filled with cartoons.

BUT, It can be: carried by a fresh faced kindergartner

Whose parents are nervous, excited, eyes welling at the bus stop.

Little shoulders received by caring, jazzy teachers;

It’s not always a new, bright shiny backpack filled with cartoons.

BUT, It can be:  the navy backpack, brand-name rubbed of

Scuffed by countless tosses on the sidewalk and team bus rides,

Worn by the senior, traversing all the lasts of high school

Already anticipating the adulting the future brings.  

It’s not always a new bright shiny backpack filled with cartoons.

IT IS the bag of meds and insulin, that extra appendage signaling life or death,

Never to be forgotten, an outward sign of one’s inner stress of chronic disease.

IT IS the bag of late life: Advil for pain, wipes for accidents no one talks about as freely as the

wipes for infants…why is that?  Why don’t we?  How come these late life bags aren’t given as

gifts, colorful, set proudly on the pew?

What would it be like to notice these?

God blesses all of them and even more, the beloved who carry them:

Their shoulders, the hands that zip and carry, the feet that trod or run or sit atop wheelchair

footrests.

You, dear one, blessed.