This Sunday was different from last Sunday (there's a statement), although I did hear the church bells chiming through the chilly neighborhood — just like last week — and recognized Ode to Joy and Amazing Grace as well as Morning Has Broken sandwiched between the by-now-familiar repetitions of scales and dongs.
And Mr. Betty and I did our usual Sunday things: made the coffee, the oatmeal — with bananas, raisins, walnuts and just a splash of maple syrup, yum — pored over the newspaper, picked up the remnants of another swingin' Saturday night from beneath the bushes and along the curb ...
Later, we walked the circumference of Fort Adams (where all was cold and still) past Sail Newport (where so many ingeniously-named J-24s wait out the winter on trailers) and pondered the events of the day before, when our son pulled away in the cutest little 10-foot U-Haul stuffed with furniture from his room, the basement, even our room to furnish his apartment & world ... worlds away.
He's been gone for a while now, in various ways, but this is/was different. It's for the long haul; he's establishing his own home. How exciting (really!!), except he left behind any number of holes in our landscape — the missing dresser, the missing chair — as well as a good number of beer cans (bottles, actually) in the recycling bin, his/ours being of the Newport Storm variety, unlike those Narragansett Lights tossed so casually beside the road ...
