Learning, always learning. At every age, every stage. Wear long pants when weedwhacking. That would have helped. My mother’s clothes are long gone; my father’s, even just for outdoor labor, are still too big, though not really caring how I look. Going through the drawers and closets, some still new with tags. Just taking those away for now that are too new, or old, too worn to give away. These, of course, that he most loved to wear, I must discard, or wear.
Driving home I stop in first to see them though they sleep. Gardening there as well, my hands are black with grave dirt on the wheel.
Mood broken as a song comes on the radio, my nose pointed north, and riding on the wind back where I belong. The space I left behind, I see now in the distance, out the rearview mirror, fading gradually away.
Janis singing, humming, screaming a husky-voiced and angelic “Bobby Magee” to me is like an intravenous glucose given when I need it most.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology