When I first learned of Mount Rushmore in Mrs. Bergstrom’s first grade class at Washington Elementary, I still believed that things lasted forever — carved in stone as it were. 

Several years later, when I stood before it, I suppose things had already begun to chip away. Life has a way of doing that. Or maybe it was the fumes from the school buses. The screams of all the other wild students, more thrilled about a day without study than the actual monument itself. I still liked it, but I’m not sure it felt all that reverential. Riding back on the bus, not to our house on VanDyke Road — a house that long gave away the promise that families stay together, that things last forever — but to a new apartment on Jefferson Street, I began to think maybe it was all a lie.

The summer before I left for college, I interned for the Recreation Department at Lincoln School. Working my way through the presidents, I suppose. In their laughter, the kids on the playground, I could hear it, they believed their summer would never end. Who was I to tell them any different. I joined in their play.

I don’t know if it was in college. At my first job. In my first apartment. Or all of them. But I began to build a new future. And it was never based on a forever, but a hopeful now, a hopeful next. And I moved further. And often. Carrying it with me. Hope will never weigh you down. 

Standing in front of Mount Rushmore yesterday, I felt it, the pure joy of it all. It seemed so clear. It was never about life’s permanence, but hope’s. Things will change. Even end. But through it all, we can be strong when wounded, joyful when discouraged. This is ever so light, and oh so mighty. I carry it with me. Ever.