Today was another Korean boy-band day (e.g., see Super Junior) here at my residence, as my school on the Mississippi Gulf Coast took a storm day and daughter Sanjina, already here from yesternight, stayed on my 'puter all day watching music videos and downloading music onto her MP3. The several Korean bands who she likes are similar to the Backstreet Boys (to me) and are quite good, in a 16-year-old American girl sort of way.
It's always the same: She multitasks on 'puter listening, watching, downloading music and playing with her photos and manipulating her Facebook and IMing and texting and sometimes doing school homework and interacting with me, and so on, while I play the housefather role (making soup today). Whew! I try to limit my multitasking to no more than three or four activities!
In those moments I can't help but think of the cemetery scene in the play Our Town, when the girl realizes, belatedly in the afterlife, the preciousness of the everyday miraculousness of life--her former Earthly life with her friends and family that she took for granted, that had passed forever.
We all do, don't we? Is there a way to consistently break through to the presence of the divine inherent in the everyday? When I sit here at my 'puter--finally!--I can much more easily practice minding and awarenessing (as the handwritten sign on my wall reminds me), but at school tomorrow I will mostly fall back into the routine, the rut, the messiness of dealing with other people and the rawness of human relations.
Oh, well. I'll look forward to Korean boy-band night again next week and watch my beloved daughter Sanjina Marie while she mostly ignores me. I did the same with my parents. Life--mostly unaware--does go on.
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