I walked out of the house on Friday without my cell phone. And I did not have time to go back to get it. My husband hasn’t been feeling well and I needed to drive him to his college class because he had an exam to take. And I needed to drop off our son at his college as well. In our treck out the door, I left my phone on the kitchen table. I had the plan to go to Kohl’s real quick on the way home, and what if there was a coupon on the internet I could grab on my phone? What if I saw something for a “stray gift” and I didn’t have my phone/camera to remember it by? What if my dad called me and needed something? What in the world did we do before we had cell phones???  I do remember those days. We lived life and if we were unavailable, well, we were simply unavailable (shocking, I know). And if we did not have our camera and film, well we just didn’t have it. And if we forgot our coupon at home, we went without it or waited until we remembered to bring it.

I did remember to bring a book, however. Because I did not have my cell phone on me, I stayed around at the college to wait until John was done with his test. So it was just me, a book, and the author (figuratively, not literally). I looked up to people-watch a bit here and there, but the alone time was unbelievably restful even with people coming and going. If I had been home and alone, I would have been cleaning, doing laundry, or some other such chore and not really been able to BE STILL. The gift of stillness is a wonderful thing.

So I have no photo. Nothing to commemorate that I had a “stray gift moment”. Does it mean it did not exist because I have no visual proof? Of course not. “Stray gifts”, gifts that cause you to pause in wonder, are not always tangible. Sometimes they are moments to be remembered in the heart.

(The featured image photo was taken a few years ago in front of a local historic museum. I edited it using an ink engraved drawing filter.)