Kintsugi (Coda)

I’ve been writing the story of my life in fragments. This is what I've learned.

This is the tenth (and final) shard of my personal writing project. Next month, this space will return to its regular (professional) programming.

For those who’ve read my reflections throughout the summer, I hope they have sparked a deeper consideration of your own. All of us have a variation of this project within, which is why I hope to offer a 2.0 version of Kintsugi in which all of us get to weave together our personal memories -- and look for the meta-patterns scattered across everyone’s lives, losses and loves. 

That feels like important work.

As Maria Popova put it, “Lives are lived in parallel and perpendicular, fathomed nonlinearly, figured not in the straight graphs of ‘biography’ but in many-sided, many-splendored diagrams. Lives interweave with other lives, and out of the tapestry arise hints at answers to questions that raze to the bone of life.”

Thank you for reading.

CODA

I am fifty-three now, almost fifty-four. 

I have been alive long enough for the memories to start to form on top of one another -- each turning of the soil unearthing forgotten fragments. 

The fabric of the time of my life has begun to double back. 

My (hopefully) long second stretch has begun.

I have not played the game the way I was supposed to.

I lack many expected markings of my years.

I have endured tragedies. I have lost my way. I have wandered with purpose.

I was born Sam Johnstone, child of Knox and Cornelia. 

I became Sam Chaltain, son of Vic — and father of Leo and Izzy.

It has taken me this long to arrive.

Kintsugi Heart, by Jenna Fournel