#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Before breakfast, taxes. Wrapping up, to get them out the door today. Also helping to get the young one out the door for school. Clearing up the house of clutter. Yikes! Half the day lived before our morning walk. Charlie and I have a great one. On the meadow road one of the men who fly their model planes says hello––says “you picked a great day for a walk”––and I greet him, and think, I pick every day for a great walk. I enjoy all weather. But yes, in the meadow, with all the flowers sweetly rotting and the soil starting to chill and the low puffy clouds and the sun on my shoulders and the leaves starting to turn, yes. Today is especially lovely. All afternoon at the pond, where my youngest and I take my grandson after school, he keeps announcing to his sand castle friends, “It’s fall!” Chilled from his swim, he has put on his sweatshirt, and still he has no desire to leave the beach. I’m really chilled too, after my swim, which I enjoyed, but there’s no sun shining on the beach and it’s cool and I’m trying to be patient in my wet bathing suit. I am breathing a sigh of relief. A busy week, and the taxes mailed off on my way to Harvard Square for lunch with a friend, Jen Minotti, who is the founder of the Journal of Expressive Writing, where I run the open mic. We realize it’s the first time we’re meeting in person, yet we’ve gotten to know each other well through our work together these last three years. My daughter, youngest, has ridden in with me to Cambridge, and I’m so grateful for our chance to talk, a heart to heart about her career and goals. After I say goodbye to Jen, I meet my daughter again, and on the way back to our car we go down Mount Auburn Street so that we can pass the HSA Building, Burke McCoy Hall, named after my father. We stop and say hello to him, in spirit, of course. And he knows we are there. And how much he’s missed. What I’d give for a day with my dad. Any day. Even a day after the Alzheimer’s. Any day to be in his presence and feel his smile. Today is a day I feel I could burst with a longing. My daughter and I continue our heart to heart on the drive home. And it’s a really good one. We pick up my grandson from school. I feel a little vacation in my heart. I can breathe a sigh of relief and get some play and get some rest and tonight, writing this, the longing to have my father alive so his grandaughter and I could talk with him, visit him together, as we did so many times, it’s still here. And I just need to honor and feel it and accept it and live with it.