...

I haven't been here in a while. Quite a long while.

A long, long while.

How long, exactly, is a "while?"

However long a "while" is, I'm pretty sure I have not been here in many whiles.

Things happened. Life, I guess, is what happened. Life is what happens when you're making other plans, as a popular song says.

I moved houses -- a couple of times.

I bought a house -- with another person. He's pretty great, this person.

Susie, the Stupendous Subaru, died. I had to get a Toyota. She's alright, I guess; we're getting to know each other, I guess.

I left nursing, got a new job. I'm officially a lab nerd. It's kind of always been the dream job I didn't know existed, but was in the back of my head all the time. I'm okay at it and I'm trying to get better.

My kids grew up. Two of them are voting (!) adults with jobs and they're contributing to society. The third is a high school senior.

Somehow he's the third of my kids to become a high school senior and I'm still ... not believing it? How does that even happen?

I mean, I've watched it happen a couple of times already and I'm still, like, uh ... could you do that again, please? I didn't quite, uh, catch what you were doing there with that sleight of hand and all, so could you do it again? Just once more? You know, without the flashes and the spangles and the jazz hands? And maybe could you let me watch it in slow motion? That might help. Maybe?

But, no. 

No one replays these magnificent and humble moments for me. No one humors me, lets me savor the moments for a bit longer, or see them one more time.

I can't blame anyone. This is not a thing to be redone. There is no malice. It is just the way things are. 

Jazz band and marching band and tennis matches and report cards and final exams.

Homecoming dances and prom dances with dates and with best friends.

AP classes and college credits and chosen electives to match hoped-for careers.

Ordering graduation announcements and class rings and letter jackets.

Final sports and music celebratory banquets.

Ceremonies in Magnus Arena.

It is the period at the end of a movement of life. This is not a coda; there is no repetition now. The repetition might have happened when one of them were a freshman, sophomore, junior.

But no more.

Here we are.

I did not know where this post was going when I started typing. But here we are.

Here we are in the middle of a pandemic. More on that next time.