When John walked through the door I did not look up. I was on Facebook, reading about the suppers and dogs and diseases of people I have not seen in twenty years who live in other states.
The other day the twins were excitedly telling me about how the new chickens are finding a way to escape from the pen in the yard, which we call
Salamandastron. But my mind was preoccupied with a man I will never meet who will not go to jail for a crime I didn't see. I glanced at them, without fully hearing what they said.
Benjamin was telling me the factors of the number he saw on the microwave just now, with pretty good eye contact I might add. But I was immersed in a marriage book about a problem I don't have but might one day be called upon to wax eloquently about for an unforeseen person. I looked up just as he was walking out of the room, perhaps searching for a more responsive audience. Like Strawberry Shortcake.
At times like these the speech by Indiana Jones to his father Henry comes back to convict me.
What you taught me, is that I was less important to you than people that have been dead for several hundred years and in other countries, and I learned it so well, that we've hardly spoken for 20 years.
How is it that warm, breathing humans an arm's length away are trumped by letters on a screen, or thoughts rumbling in my head about inanimate objects? It makes no sense.
But my family is beginning to wake up now. I think I will go greet them with both eyes and arms.
What is my problem? How is my attention so
