“As soon as I left it dawned on me that she already lives with me.” – Ford Cragun

Already There

There are all kinds of bridges in this world.  I was on one of them yesterday in Columbus, Ohio.  It was the Main Street Bridge.

The Main Street Bridge was the site of the Columbus Fiery Foods Festival.  It’s a show case and tasting event for, mostly, hot sauces.  The day before walking that bridge I brought a couple of my own homemade hot sauces, Ghost Pepper and Fiery Smoked Habanero, as a gift to my daughter Annie.  That’s when she surprised me with her own gift; labels she designed and made for my sauces.  “Loose Nut Hot Sauces.”  

And, the next day we were off to the fiery bridge to taste hundreds of other offerings, savors and sights hoping for some inspiration for new Loose Nut tastes to enjoy.  That being said, perhaps I should have also said insights!

You see, I’d had lunch with my friend Ford Cragun the week before leaving for Columbus. It was another spicy affair since we were dining at Wright’s Barbeque on NE 3rd Street.  The food was great, as always, and the spicy flavors seemed to loosen Ford’s tongue a little too!  As we talked and ate he had a message flash across his telephone screen and then his face.  It was from one of his daughters.  The flashed messages shifted our conversation to another direction totally, as he recounted a related story.

“My wife and I were eating dinner in a Sandy restaurant when we noticed a young woman who seemed to need help.”  He said.  “I remember thinking at the time that this woman needed shelter.  Not just a roof over her head, but refuge; a place where she could find respite.”

It was just a feeling he had.  He didn’t know her or her circumstance directly, so he didn’t feel comfortable approaching a complete stranger to see if she needed help.  So, Ford and his wife left the eatery and got in their car to drive home.  They hadn’t driven far when he had a thought.

“As soon as I left it dawned on me that ‘she’ already lives with me.  She’s already there in my home.” Ford said, with tears in his eyes.

That was the moment he crossed a bridge toward a new relationship with his daughter!  With one brief dawning of understanding he learned something extraordinary.

“I learned then that I had been able to accept strangers.  But, I hadn’t been able to extend the same kind of unconditional love and compassion toward my own daughter!  It was as if this mental and emotional ‘dawning’ created an undiscovered bridge for me to cross; a new approach to help someone precious to me!”

There are all kinds of bridges in this world.  I was on one of them yesterday in Columbus, Ohio.  It was the Main Street Bridge where I was enjoying a fiery foods festival.  That Bridge was the site of the Columbus Annual Fiery Foods Festival.  It’s a show case and tasting event for, mostly, hot sauces.  The day before walking the bridge I brought a couple of my own homemade hot sauces, Ghost Pepper and Fiery Smoked Habanero, as a gift to my daughter Annie.  She surprised me with her own gift; labels she designed and made for them.  “Loose Nut Hot Sauces.”  

Just one week earlier, Ford introduced me to another kind of bridge, a relationship bridge. And, it seems as if, perhaps there’s a little loose nut in all of us.  After all, we all have fiery relationships with those we love at one time or another and there are lots of ways to bridge potential fissures with our loved ones.  

Just remember that in many cases, such bridges of understanding are already available right in our own homes.  Sometimes, they just need to dawn on us.