Mischief

Between watching kids ride their bikes and the lasting scar of my daughter’s late puppy, I see time forming in the deep lines across my face. I don’t mind getting old, I just never noticed how long it’s been. It seems like a lifetime ago I was watching my own children grow up and make mistakes and learn. Now I suppose they get to do the same with me. Aging in a way is like birth in reverse, where the burdens of life get lighter, yet you’re more dependent on others than ever before.
 
With a smokey haze covering the sky, it allows me to leave the shades open longer than I normally do. Still  inside this container of fresh air and comfort, I feel like I’ve been “bubble-wrapped” just like the kids we enjoy complaining about today. But my arm still itches from the scab left over by a puppy that’s no more. Taken out by something he ate, much too fast and much too soon. In a way I see myself like that but instead I’m blessed with a way to communicate my discomfort, whether through the pen or my voice. But I don’t speak enough to maintain an audible tenor, so my keyboard does most of the talking.
 
So as the golf cart and bicycles make the rounds around the building. I quietly stare into the great beyond hoping for a more exciting future than what I see before me. For life isn’t going to be much longer I think, despite my best efforts. So I’ve resigned myself to becoming just a footnote in someone else’s mind, not much different than my grandparents or my parents, aunts, and uncles. But a smile cracks along my face as I watch the kids hang from off the golf cart. Yelling with excitement at the mischief they now create.   
 
#Mischief #Youth #Time #Memory #Comfort