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Sony Alphafemale Micro-grant Winner March 2023

 “How’s it going?” A co-worker of mine asked another.  “I’m here,” he responded clearly unimpressed with his Tuesday afternoon. “I exist.” 

I thought about those words. How separate they should be from the feeling of going through the motions. 

When I first met my fiancé, we were friends who spent our weekends exploring southern Arizona. One September afternoon, we took a small road trip from Tucson to look for a cave we wanted to photograph. 

It wasn’t long after we got there that we felt the air change. The wind picked up and we watched as heavy monsoon clouds formed in the distance. We worked quickly to avoid the incoming storm. 

I climbed to a small ledge at the back of the cave and turned to see my now fiancé standing there. He’d stopped taking photos. He stopped looking at his phone. He just stopped. 

I watched him watch the small flashes of lightning permeate the clouds. We both listened as distant thunder echoed over the red rocks. 

I lifted my camera and snapped this photo of him. 

We were far from the first people to visit this cave. It’s certainly been heavily trafficked since. 

But in those moments, it felt like we stumbled onto a secret. Like we discovered something important.

I remember that feeling when I look at this photo. The thickness in the air. The sense that something so much bigger was about to happen. The overwhelming aliveness of it. 

I am here. I exist.

A few months ago, I lost my dad. It’s odd, but I can’t seem to find very many photos of us together. Unless you count rushed phone snaps in a cluttered room taken quickly around Christmas. 

When I think of my childhood, I see a vision of morning light spilling through our living room windows, my dad on the couch with a beige coffee mug, and the crackling noise of a fresh newspaper. 

He was a reader. A dreamer. And he reminded me every time we spoke that he was proud of me.  

The sunrise I drove alone to Lone Rock Beach in Lake Powell, I was terrified. 

It was the off-season, and no one was there. Not one other person. I remember the jump in my heart rate turning off the road and onto the beach, unsure of the clearance of my tires or the depth of the sand that was known to be deceptive. I was not prepared to get myself out if I got stuck. 

 I parked as far as I dared and took the rest on foot. Setting my blanket down the sun began peeking behind me. Lone Rock, a formation I’d wanted to see, finally revealed its silhouette between the sky and water.

I waited. And then, to my absolute disbelief, this full rainbow appeared.  

It all happened so fast. I took a few photos before the wind picked up in a way that scared me. Sand stung my eyes and quickly damaged my lens.  

I ran to my car and sat there for a while, taking in the sounds of the violent wind and sand. I watched until losing visibility passed the windows. My hands have never shaken as hard as they did that morning.  

I took this photo before my dad passed. But looking at it now, I remember him. My introverted father who adventured mostly in stories. I remember how he pushed me to do the things he never tried doing. He was an explorer of words, but he made me an explorer of the world. 

It makes me a little less sad that we might not have many photos together, because really, he’s in every photo I take.

Reading for a Wedding:

Jack Kerouac once wrote “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple,” I’ve stood by that quote for years. Putting faith in the idea of “one day.” It doesn’t have to be now—but one day, it’ll be right.

Looking back, I wonder if I focused on the wrong part of that saying. “One day,” keeps you focused on the horizon, eyes squinted toward that future time when it all will come together. The right things will happen, the right words will come, and that will be the moment you’ve waited for. It doesn’t have to be now, because “one day.” 

But that’s not how life works. So, I wonder if instead, I should have focused on the second part of that quote. How the right words will be simple. The right things will be simple. 

I’ve rewritten this many times, and I may not have the right words, but I do know what is simple. This moment. How precious it is. That we’ve finally made it here, together. 

The road here was complicated. To call it frustrating or difficult is an understatement. 

What is simple is how much love is present in this room. How much pride. How much joy. 

What is simple is that these two people love each other. And no matter what happens next, how hard life gets, how many successes, hurts, or moments of joy they experience, they choose each other. And that is simple.

Happiness is often thought of as a state of being that is difficult to achieve. Something we might have one day. But happiness isn’t a state of being. It’s the moment, right when you feel it.  

Look around right now. Take it in. We have happiness. This is it. Not on the horizon. Right in front of us. It’s right here, and it’s simple.