Ready or not

I never was a fan of hide & seek when I was small. I could weasel into a lot of tight spaces, the dryer, a chest, under a couch. It wasn’t that I was a bad “hider” necessarily, I was not a patient child and was the furthest thing from quiet. Hiding made me feel so scared. I’ve heard that this is common… whenever I would hide I’d instantly have a full bladder and simply could not think about anything else besides emptying that.

Being ready with open arms for open arms is about blind trust. It has everything and nothing to do with nurturing. Everything and nothing to do with past. Everything and nothing to do with one’s beliefs of their own value.

When I lived in Ghana, there was this red dirt hill we had to walk up in order to get to our home. A couple houses before we reached the top with the green fence, kiddos would come running. Little buns covered—but usually not—sprinting at white, “oburuni”, strangers with expanded arms. I was tackled to and from home, at least twice a day, by kids that I loved at first sight. Kids that never hid behind their hands or legs of big people, kids that loved loud, open, and without fear. When I think of love, in it’s purest, rawest, most true essence, I think of these chubby-legged, barefoot kiddos. And ‘ready or not’ turns into something entirely unexpected.