“It’s simple. You just (fill in the blank .)”

How many times have you heard this? Better yet, how many times have you said it? We like to reduce entire ideas and systems into prescriptive statements, a bullet-pointed list to check off and turn in for a gold star.

This morning I write just for the practice.

I am hunched over a tray table in a window seat, looking down over the expanse of a flat Texas. There's no burning thought to flesh out with ink, no idea lobbed onto my heart that's bursting to get out. My only thoughts, really, are for my boys, all three of them. I've been away for three and a half days and that's too long this time.