I'm the only one still up, so I'm downstairs trying to re-capture some of today.

I spent some time just driving around town and out in the country, getting my head together. Watched hawks play in the sky. I drove past the home of my former cello teacher, a man who actually started the city symphony here as a way to welcome scientists and intellectuals from Europe fleeing fascism. My teacher was a tiny, stooped-over man, and I was his star student. He put up with me from age 9-14, when I was a potato-chip-grease fingered brat, and from 14-18 when I was a punk rocker in exile. Can you imagine? A punk playing cello in our symphony! But that was me. He lived in one of our city's oldest homes, and we used to set up on his front porch and play cello duets to the old trees and passing cars. I loved him and he knew it, but I failed to tell him what he had really meant to me...because I was too young at the time to know it myself. In between sonatas he would tell me stories about the old city, famous people he knew, and things he had learned on his travels.

He was my Rupert Giles (extra credit to anyone who gets the reference).

He died when I was in college (on a cello scholarship, too). So I stopped at his house today, and in my mind I said all the things I needed to say: Thank you. Thank you for seeing a bright kind behind the greasy fingers and green hair and combat boots. Thank you for never letting me see you cross. Thank you for somehow letting me know that even if I had seen you cross, I would not have felt like I'd lost a role model, because true role models are not perfect people--they are flawed, loving ones. I don't really play the cello anymore (I still have it and will never sell it), but I wouldn't give up the memories.

I thought about how careless we are with our own histories and stories, how easily we relinquish anything worthwhile simply because we become silly, sightless people. We pass through the lives of so many awesome, irreplaceable people, and yet we lose our grip on them.

And as the afternoon progressed, my boy River asked me to go for a long walk with him. So we set out on the sidewalk to a place I'd never been before--literally, "Where the Sidewalk ends." He held my hand at times, and ran on ahead at other times, as the sun sank into orange light across old fence posts, brambles of barbed wire marking fields that only hold ghosts anymore, and swaying switchgrass. New shoots of Indian Paintbrush are coming up around the old wood posts, and Evening Primrose and Goldenrod are starting to bloom. I showed River that you can eat newly-picked Dandelion leaves, which he thinks is cool (the kid hates vegetables, but if he thinks it's some new nature lore it becomes acceptable. He still chews weed stalks between his teeth when we go on walks in the summer). I showed him mullein plants, which can grow tall stalks of flowers that are used to treat earaches and coughs.

We followed a paved trail down along a creekside, watching turtles take puffs of air before diving again. All around us we could hear frogs and the evening songs of birds. Sadly, a lot of litter has collected along the banks of the creek, but the place is still beautiful. He was full of questions about animals and plants. We walked through the sunset and found a path back home.

Kind of a decent way to spend a day, huh?