Yesterday our neighbors had a big tree cut down in their backyard. We live tightly packed, neighbor to neighbor to neighbor. You'd think we'd get to known one another that way. But that's not how it works and there's a silly bit of me that absorbs a sort of comfort from the mystery of it all. I used to spend long sunlit hours outside in my little playact paradise.
It's a small space; but I was small too. In adult eyes it's nothing but a swimming pool and stucco. But to me, to a remarkable child such as I, it was a morphed into a world of exotics.
The constant hum-buzzing of air conditioning units soothed me like a purring cat, and you will find me still lying in the grass patches staring up into the blueness. It's always blue. Except on the really special days when banks and blankets of cloud grace the sky for a moment or two.
These moments hardly last, and so I've found the blue very dependable. When you're back there you feel so secluded, but in a good way. Time slows down just a little bit, and suddenly you have nothing to do with the rest of planet earth. This is an escape---a secret garden---none to beautiful, but lovely in secret ways.
I began this post by talking about a tree. Today I realized what it is to have something you took for granted stripped away. The tree was prominent, and now that it's gone I feel like my miniaturized world has a schism. Like the gap after you've lost a tooth.
It made me think.
It made me wonder about other gaps in life.
