Reflections

The day was cold and the sky was cloudy white like a worn out old tee shirt. The sun was in there somewhere I just couldn't see it. It was November and the leaves had already left the trees and blown across yards into fence rows. Men and women dressed in wool coats and the occasional fur filed out of a dark green tent back to their Buicks and Oldsmobile's, heads down and mostly silent. A funeral.

All across town you could hear the church bells chime...it was just beautiful. Tons of smiling faces, a mother in tears and father with a distant gaze file out of a church. Flowers and ferns - summer dresses matching summer suits and a girl…dressed in white. A wedding.

Silence in a hall way...waiting. Family members leaned against the white walls, heads down...still waiting. The door opens and out comes a face with a smile and in the room you can hear the crying. Is it a boy or a girl? Who does he or she look like? What did they name this little one? A birth.

Rows and rows of people gathered. Suits and dresses pressed for this very day to match their smiles and tears. Mixed feelings of pride and sadness - the turning of a page that you knew would eventually have to be turned. Caps flood the air along with the cheers of a group who have made one of their first big accomplishments. A graduation.

A single thing given to us all, something to cherish, something to protect yet still experience. A span of time for one and all to know and be know, see, touch and feel. A life.

Doesn't that seem simple.