Fingerprints

I love visiting old places. I try to picture what the place looked like when it was new, with the people who lived there dressed in the garb of the day, doing what people did then. I can see beyond the age and see the hands that rocked the cradle, carried the candle stand, put the hand sewn quilts on the bed. I like to think there might still be fingerprints. When we visited the Lincoln Memorial last weekend, I wonder if any particles of DNA of all the millions of people that have visited that place, marched on the Mall, spoke from the steps, has found a home there. Is there a dried drop of sweat from Martin Luther King Jr.'s brow hidden in the cracks of marble? Is there a tiny bit of hair blown off JFK's head secreted away under the pillars? Did a part of me stay there, somehow, when I touched the smooth walls and wondered these things? As we stride through our lives, meeting the past at almost every turn, are we able to leave our fingerprints on the places we went, the people we touched? When we fold our hands at day's end, can we look at them and know that we will be remembered? Can we make sure that what we touched, we handled with care? Leave your love everywhere, at the cradle, the quilt and every heart you hold.