Same-Same is Different-Different

I’m on the western edge of the Eastern time zone, visiting family in Indiana. The sun rises and sets an hour later here than it does in Vermont, on the eastern edge of the Eastern time zone.

We call it Eastern time, but that covers a lot of territory. At the same time, it’s light in Vermont, it’s dark in Indiana and vice-versa during these transition times at the edges of daylight. The same time, but not the same light. The same light but not at the same time.

Maybe it’s never the same. Never.

Picking Paw-Paws

Visiting my brothers in Indiana, the 3 of us went hunting for paw-paws. In an hour, we found 5.

My brothers were generous enough to give me the 2 ripe ones. Oh, my. I haven't tasted a paw-paw in decades. Maybe this paw-paw is the last one i will ever eat in this lifetime.

I tried to savor each and every bite, each and every breath that brought that familiar smell to my nostrils.

Savoring every moment as if it's the last. Because it is.

Garden Bench Memorial

My dad died 16 years ago today, and there's a garden bench with his name on it in the tiny park in downtown Westfield, Indiana.

I don't think of my father as civic-minded exactly, yet there's that bench that he "bought" a couple of years before he died, when the town mothers were raising money for this then-new little downtown park. He was having coffee with his cronies at McDonald's, when someone approached him, and the men outbid each other in that friendly, small-town way.

I like to sit on that bench with my father's name on it during my annual visits to my brother nearby. I sit and remember my father and the way the town used to look. Everything has changed now. The name of the town remains the same, but it looks very different. The names of the streets remain the same, but Main Street and Union Street have been totally redesigned.

Change. Nothing stands still.