Flipping Sweet Sorrow

          We living creatures are constantly swimming in a confluence of diverse and dynamic systems.  I know that.  And I know that a peaceful day is something of a miracle.  And any series of peaceful days is a masterpiece of luck and engineering. I know that you cannot expect things to stay the same.  Sometimes, you don’t even want them to.  And change really can bring all kinds of freshness to life.

            Still.

            I remember once, a long, long time ago when the Brands still lived here, and the Myers and the Smiths and all the kids were still young and attached to their family houses—I was walking Shelee home from her weekly babysitting gig with us.  It was dark, a lovely almost balmy summer evening.  We talked about life.  I left her when the front door of her house opened to welcome her home, spilling that warm, amber light-of-life out onto the doorstep.  Then I walked alone back up the dark, quiet street.  I realized that I could name every person who lived in every house as I went, and that they were all friends, people we liked and enjoyed- some more, some less, but all comfortable.  I knew the street would not be like this forever.  But for that moment life was sweet and calm.  I should have marked it on the calendar (“Here, the earth slowed to a halt and swayed gently in the cosmic winds”).

            Things have changed since then.  I still love my neighborhood, but that amazing harmony is long, long gone.  We still have it in large pockets.  But the houses are old now, and the people who move in are not the same set of young families starting out together.  More and nicer houses have been built down here, further west, further east.  Long time neighbors have taken jobs, grown out of our middle-little houses, moved to different states.  And every time that happens, my heart sags.

            But this time is one of the terrible times.  How many summers have I sighed, watching over the front fence as Coxes and Tuineis sat out on a summer evening, lawn chairs in the street, parents surrounded by swarms of bikes and balls and skate boards and guitars – all manned by summer children, dancing in the gloaming.  The sight of them brought back my own twelve year old summer evenings, chasing fireflies, playing thrilling stalking games in the high grown grasses of the field behind the house.  The mystery of evening, tempered that same safe warm amber glow of life in the windows of my house.

            I tried to talk the Coxes out of moving.  I did everything a human being could possibly do.  But now this lovely summer vision is gone with the rest, packed into some heart album, waiting to be re-located by the right visual search string some day.  And we are all sad.  Sad to see another sister leaving.  Sad to lose those kids.  Sad at the new quiet on our street.