For Years and Years

Aaron's House Residents and Staff Speak at the Capitol

For 12 days Aaron lived clean and sober again after a relapse on April 22, 2005. I like to believe he would live clean and sober for the rest of his life spanning years and years not just 12 days.

Maybe in a way Aaron's recovery continues long terms in the lives of the young people who have called Aaron's House, Grace, House, Connect House, and Next Step home. For nine school years, since 2007, the Aaron J. Meyer Foundation's collegiate recovery housing options have been an integral part of the recovery solution for college students in Madison. Well done everyone.

Days

Where do they come from, where do they go?

Tomorrow is the day people one hundred years ago pondered as the Titanic was just beginning to rust.  Forever there has been an April 26, 2016 in the future. In 3 hours and 20 minutes the day that never was, will be. Today, and all it promised will be a has been. Where will today go when it makes way for progress?  Do the days go by? I saw a calendar from 1964. Future events were pencilled in. Important commitments were written in ink. Some of those past future days held more necessary expectations of those people. Eventually necessity ended.

Did today live up to expectations? Will this day be remembered? Should it be forgot?

Tomorrow always looks better. We look forward to the new day. And then we sleep through the first six hours and the last two or three.  The day we looked to with such hope is a quarter past before we even know it's arrived. Did I use all that she gave? I gave her again, not more than twelve hours before I  called her a day. What i didn't get today, I'll get tomorrow. I had more and less at the start of today.  At the end of tomorrow I'll have more and less of the same.

Considering the alternative, this was a very good day. I'll let her go into the night, three hours early.

Overdue at The King County Library

In the lower right corner of page 9 the simple hand stamped ten words proclaimed her emancipation.

                  This is no longer

                        property of

                King County Library System

Red letters of a rubber stamp  assure me I am not in possession of stolen property, or worse a runaway from a library 1,924 miles away from here. Lt. Joe Bookman will not knock on my door to question me about instant coffee and what I know about the missing book, How to Write A Sentence and How To Read One. 

She is  free to roam the world and never be over due to return to her Dewey Decimal System place on the  metal shelf of a concrete building in damp, misty Seattle. This work of art of Stanley Fish, Professor of Law, will live in the morning sunshine, on my wooden bookshelf, patiently available to inspire me to aspire to craft a fine  sentence.

Mulch Season and Not In My Yard

Same time each year my mail box receives the same reminder as my mental in-box. It's mulch time. There is a place for mulch ...at least 50 feet from a road, and not behind 4 ft high 2 ft thick immovable concrete walls. Mulch has its place in my memory; and not in my yard.