Two Pieces – If Only and Fireflies

If Only

If Only, I don’t have regrets but I know a missed opportunity when I see one. If only I had taken off the harness sooner and followed you on your wild escapades to far off places. Trips to Iceland mud masked at the Blue Lagoon, the Netherlands where you stayed with Arlene at The Conservatory a hotel made from a music school with violins hanging from the chandelier. Then off to South Africa where you captured lions, giraffes and your favorite the Zebra with the point and shoot camera I bought for the trip. I could have sat with you at the edge of the water with the tracker who told you he had learned his craft barefoot with his grandfather. I watched the video of you zip lining across Victoria falls with your friends, a hundred times. Noting that you displayed equal amounts of bravery and quite honestly, insanity for risking it all for a few minutes of adrenaline. Oh Well, I was going to say that was water under the bridge but thought better of it. Laughing at myself now, something I never quite perfected back then. I hear you clearly, as if you were just in the next room. “Life is too important to be taken seriously, Danny.”

We did travel together or separately and meet up in far off places. The trip to Paris, chasing after the Australians on a walk about in Europe. Breathless from running to keep up when the Eiffel Tower appeared over the skyline. We did spend a fair amount of time across the dinner table from each other, me resting my eyes on you, gaining sustenance from the warmth of your smile and the mischief in your eyes. I relive the times we spent together each morning when I sit to do sketches of those times in a few words on a page. If only.

Fireflies

I relive the times we spent together each morning when I sit and do sketches, in words on the page. I have traced the early years, long haired and guitar playing where I wooed you and won you and you proceeded to knock the rough edges off. You did your best to civilize me and although still far from finished you were pleased enough with your handiwork and we began to form an “us.” I have written about our mishaps, our missteps, the losses and gains. The shattering of your heart when we couldn’t save our first born. The constancy of her presence in your life.

There were volumes written before the boys arrived and even more when they became our sole focus and their care and wellbeing became our passion and our mission. I can sit and flash through images of our youngest in the safety of your arms smiling at the camera. I run through our witness of their achievements well past the trophies for attendance. Our eldest’s stunning oratory from stage right, our youngest climbing Kilimanjaro. They left our home and we learned to remember how we came to be together and what we might do as old lovers instead of young. I wrote tales of empty nesters and poems that placed you on a pedestal that you stood on briefly before jumping off making faces at the pretense but secretly loving playing both my mistress and my muse.

But for the last five years I have compiled a study of your absence and of the emptiness that echoes in my soul. The sketches bring me solace and comfort. When family and friends read them with tears in their eyes I know I am learning to master my own craft of sharing my memories, bringing the past to the present in the only form of time travel that has stood the test of time. So I have no regrets, we shared each other’s company for almost half a century, our Golden Anniversary just a few days away. I celebrate the life we lived, our little ones, now grown and their little ones who you had a chance to hold and the images that I surround myself with each morning when I catch the fireflies of those memories and share them with those I love.