adieu (the path)

I've talked before about our new neighbors, they aren't so new anymore. They are not so new anymore and now they are leaving. Their first year as parents. It's been hard on them, hard on them in a way I understand as if looking through a window. Maybe into a mirror. They are moving back to where they came, the hope is things will feel more normal there. I don't question this and yet I doubt it, wiser only by a few extra child years and nothing more. Silence.

We offer to take them to the mountains and join our weekly sojourn. They agree, treasuring their last california bits, the sun and heat and dry and sage. We hike, four big and two little people and we talk, four big people and two little people in various stages of enunciation and sound and gurgle and sighs. We don't talk with our souls but occasionally with our hearts, our brains and we see with our eyes and it still matters. They were our neighbors for a good while, a decent enough side trip on the road of life that could have gone on for a few more days. We talk of gathering again but it's that kind of talk that means well and will surprise you later if it comes true, not for any other reason than life itself. I will miss them.