A Moving Goodbye

Our impending move has all sorts of ramifications. The Goodwill bag in the front hall closet overflows with castoffs to be donated. Purchases we've never used or no longer want. Why did I buy that olive oil spray bottle from Home Goods, twice? There's the obvious change of address notifications for newspapers and magazines and the stockpiling of brown cardboard boxes.

Most of these changes are happy ones, with the anticipation of our move, except for the one I didn't count on. Saying goodbye to the Bug Man. I know all about his family, and he in turn knows a great deal about mine. He's been a loyal supporter of my writing, even when I didn't believe in myself; a cheerleader from the peanut gallery.

Once a month, on schedule, he arrived with his cheery disposition for the past eight years...and we have a chat. My closest girlfriends and I don't get to see each other in person with such regularity.

I know about his wife's knee replacement surgeries and his daughter's successes in school, told with the adoring smile of a doting father. Food was often a topic for conversation, on more than a few occasions. His thoughtful and creative attention to detail when buying presents for his family became legendary. And he told me he still had one special Christmas gift to buy his wife, a Shel Silverstein book. This all from a man who claims he doesn't like to talk to most people.

And so as I handed him his Christmas card and said goodbye, this burly tough guy put his glasses down on the counter and did what I felt like doing, but wouldn't, his eyes welled up with tears. I promised I would send him my book when it was completed. I wanted to say, if.  Which brought to mind a Shel Silverstein quote I could stand to revisit now and then.

~ Listen to the mustn'ts child. Listen to the don't. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child. Anything can be. ~

We'll see...