New

New things are nice.
I've always liked them.
When I was growing up, new things were a point of celebration, connection.
I grew up on new things.
My parents believed all things were dispensable. When we didn't want something anymore, we just got something new. We didn't keep furniture for 50 years. We had it for 10. The red couch in our living room?
New.
Nobody kept old coats or shoes from the 1970's in the attic. We didn't have that Chanel suit that someone's grandma bought in 1960 and wore thin. We didn't keep a carved wooden owl that used to hold up Grandpa's books during the depression.
We were immigrants. Everything we had was left behind somewhere else. There were no heirlooms.
So, I've always wondered: What is my heirloom? What will I leave my kids?
I just moved into a new house.
A new room.
New roommates.
I started a new job last week.
New office.
New faces.
New routine.
Sometimes all these new things can start to make you wonder who you are.
I used to be the person that worked a job I didn't like, going home to a house that made me a little dizzy, in a neighborhood I had always dreamed existed, living a life I thought was fake.
Now, I'm the person who works a 9-5 job I can't believe is real: free Starbucks all day, every kind of soda imaginable, views from the 18th floor of downtown, writing, editing and taking photos, leaving at 5 and sometimes before.
New.
In all this, I sat down the other day, and wondered why something still feels like it's missing.
And I remembered God.
A little. Just a little.
He was a faint memory somewhere in the back of my mind. He was like the purple smear left on the inside of your eyelids when the camera flashes. He was sitting in the back of the room, in a big chair, behind all the other things.
Old.
No longer new. No longer the latest shiny thing. No longer exciting.
Why God, I wondered, Why did you have to be born old?
And I thought about those people who become succesful and famous and they dump their families.
God gave me all the shiny new things I wanted.
But he was old.
And he is the oldest thing I have. Old from of old. He isn't new at all. And it doesn't fit in my brain that I will ever want something old, that I could desire to see the same thing again and again. My dad says the angels revolve around god and see a new face every time.
Maybe.
But I never see his face to begin with.
I think we're afraid of the journey.
I think we're afraid to say our doubts aloud, to mention them, to scream them, to talk about them, to write them down. Our dark thoughts get swallowed by thick bible verses people tell us to read and remember. We ignore them until they pop up like bubbles in the middle of the night, and then we're suddenly caught wondering: what if God is the only thing I ever have to pass down to my children?
Will that be enough for me?