I think he remembered.

It’s been ages since he’s been. Five years, perhaps? Half his life.

He saw my grubby shoes go by the door.

Wag.

I put on sunscreen.

Dance.

I grabbed my keys.

Whine. Whine.

I picked up the leash.

Loaded in the car, he quieted. Tongue lolling. Bracing corners. Toppling.

Just before the driveway to the parking lot.

Whinewhinewhinewhine.

Pranceprance.

I know, buddy, me, too.

Any guesses on this volunteer?

So long and thanks for all the…

Well, there weren’t any fish.

I’ll be taking some time soon. Time for me. Time for reading a book with pages (not played and paused during a commute each day.) Time for building places for new life to grow. Time for naps.

It’s been over a decade since I started on this adventure with a small (20-30 people, mostly part-time) company. We’re over a thousand now and it’s time for me to go, I hear. Funding from this firm this. Restructuring that. Go be free out there.

It has been quite the ride. It didn’t feel real.

It feels real now.

It

feels

real.

It took me eleven years to cry at work. It was when my favorite person left last year. I’ve cried more in the last few days than perhaps any time in my life. And the people around me, crying with me…I feel for them. They are why I cry.

I needed to visit this today. And there it was.

There’s an offer on my garden (and the house that belongs to it.) I may leave my job, sell our house, celebrate both kids’ birthdays, two weddings, and a MIL retirement all in a month. And that’s not counting the usual well checks, and the haircuts, and the CPA and the and the and the…

I am looking forward to finding stillnes.

I am eager to unlearn. deprogram. revert.

I see that sunshine coming. I feel it licking at my skin, warming in laps. I know the other side will be bright. I know the next adventure will be here soon. I know.

I know I’d like to skip this part. I know I’d like to be there now. I don’t know so much.

I see the sunshine at the end of this. And I am grateful that time passes on its own so the sunshine inches closer each day no matter how the day goes.

A birth day.

We pick some days to mark. We choose wedding dates to become anniversaries. We choose Thanksgiving, or not. Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Yule or not.

And some days choose us. A grandfather dies on a mother’s birthday. A cousin shares his birthday with the day a best friend miraculously survives.

Today, this jovial fun-filled mischievous holiday was the day my son chose for his birthday and boy, did he hit the nail on the head.

“Mama, dere’s a flower in dere.”

– Yes, love. And we’ll leave it for the bees, won’t we?

“I yam, mama. I yam leaving it for da bees. The bees is hungry. And they make us food! Is it snyacktiem?”