I didn’t expect to be around this long. I don’t know why but sometime in grade school I began thinking I wouldn’t live much longer. It’s just how it was. I have clear memories of going to bed, concerned I wouldn’t wake again.
Although time dispels youthful apprehensions, that old expectation still colors my perspective. I sometimes look around and can’t believe I’ve travelled so far into the future, a happy chrononaut superseding fate.
Having been hit twice by a car without notable injury has inflated my confidence. While dying in my sleep remains possible, I can’t imagine meeting my fate biking along Warm Springs Avenue.
Hollywood snow floats outside my window, held tenuously by gravity, swirling but not settling.
I should have slipped on my overpants, I think to myself while pedaling. It’s colder than it looks. But not too cold, I guess, to stop and watch a honking flock of geese approach the river like a dark runway bordered with yellow sun bounced from tall cottonwoods.
I thought someone was here at the river’s edge until I walked down and could see the colors aren’t a coat but a raft readied for a New Year’s float. Good luck with that idea!
The chain link fence along the pond behind the Quarry Apartments seemed to go up after Heather Davidson drowned there. I think of that almost every time I ride by.
I don’t often see a colorful sunset while commuting so worth another stop, obviously. A young mother with a stroller by the swings is obviously the better parent. “Screw that,” would be my answer if Brenna asked to visit the park on a freezing day like this.
Years drift silently from one to the next as we get older. With nothing to differentiate them, clockwork days blend together. Yesterday was a decade ago and today is a surprise.
I am not given to resolutions but I would like to do more to differentiate my days, to savor this unexpected life.
by Jason Abbott