every single day

The hostas are leaning yellow and there's a pumpkin on our front porch. 

Last night some of us sat on the couch, elbow to elbow, clicking through Halloween costume ideas - cheese puffs, rainbows, R2D2, Rick Astley...

I walked past the fire station's make-shift pumpkin patch recently, and remembered being there thirteen years earlier. I could feel the air shifting to autumn against my cheeks and found myself nearly moved to tears with the changing leaves, at the growing boys, by the missing girl.

The boys baked pumpkin cookies this morning, without much assistance. They scattered when it was time to clean up and gathered again when the timer went off.

As Ohio opens its eyes to October I want to close mine to so much of it. To the football stadiums full to capacity and to the vaccine-avoiding lunatics, to all the beautiful homecoming pictures being shared and to the pile of post-baking dishes by the sink.

Remember when you were small and could do that, when it worked to close your eyes to both avoid what was right in front of you and also to conjure what was not?

The last time I visited my dad I left with two pairs of reading glasses. My eyes don't work like they used to, open or closed. 

Every single day I wake up to a world that looks different than it might have. The odious, intolerable mystery of what could've been one grand narrative underscores the great fortune of what is.