This morning was a good morning. I'd had a great yoga session last night, a good night of sleep, the sun was shining, I have a rest day today, and I'm wearing new shoes.
Absolutely nothing to be sad about....Then it pounced.
A Honda Odyssey passed by - one with four swinging doors instead of sliders - the same kind my grandpa drove. I was thinking of the time we visited home in August after the San Ardo Road Race and how on that Sunday afternoon we loaded him into that mini van after lunch. We helped him get his lifeless foot in the door, the one that hung at at the bottom of his slender legs all clad in sweat pants and tube socks and those funny black tennis shoes with the velcro closures. All clothing choices based on rapidly declining functionality. I remembered kissing him on his weathered and unshaven cheek and squeezing his angular shoulders. 
My eyes welled up as I approached my off ramp for work. Then, as I waited at the light, I saw a hummingbird dancing above the street sign and the tiger slipped away as quickly as it had come.
4 comments:
Is that little person in the picture you? My grandpa always had a jacket on too when everyone was around. He died in 1997. He was a good man.
Yeah, that's me saying goodbye to Grandpa when he and grandma were leaving to work in Africa for a few years. I think I was about 2 at the time. He made it to the ripe old age of 95 before he passed away last November.
Aren't grandparents great? Your grandpa sounds like he was a southern gentleman, too (always wearing a proper jacket).
how true.....everything.
songs get me going. songs evoke vivid memories of loves, of loss, of specific events. songs.
Ah yes. The soundtrack of life. Too bad the songs most strongly burned into my soundtrack remind me of romantic relationships gone bad....sigh.
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