A Conversational Snippet

Where were we when Peachellow and Yeach were discussed?

You know the color, somewhere between peach and yellow, as the sun is setting  but it's still bright outside.  It's the color of coming home early enough to play outside, for a little while, anyway, before it got dark and Mom had to make dinner.

All four of us remember discussing it.  Big Cuter and I know it was in Chicago, though he thinks we were still on Lake Shore Drive and I know we were going west on Fullerton, where the Mies van der Rohe building is set back enough to afford a great view of an urban sunset.  Little Cuter and TBG are cresting a hill in San Francisco; though she is certain it was Geary, TBG only recollects coming over the top of a hill.

It's interesting that we all agree that the conversation was vehicular in location.  I think I was driving the kids, without TBG.... and only believing he wasn't there because I was behind the wheel.... which wouldn't have happened had he been conscious and in the car.  Little Cuter thinks she was alone with her father and her brother doesn't remember her one way or the other.

But we all share the memory and the color.

In these 10 Days of Awe, as I reflect on my life with, perhaps, a bit more intention than on ordinary days despite my protestations to the contrary, I come to see the wonderfulness in the simple pieces, not in the bigger moral issues nor parental pride nor love eternal, but in the immediacy of a memory of word-play and careful consideration and defending your opinion and in the hug around my heart as we smile about it two decades later.

This is a sweet New Year, indeed.