Different Seasons

The dream started out just fine.

I was walking through the streets in my area. It wasn’t our usual post-dinner evening walk route, and I was alone. The trees were bare and leaves crunched underfoot. An elderly woman worked in her front yard, some late season tending of her garden. We waved to each other with a neighborly familiarity, smiling.

The season changes, and it’s now spring, or at least early summer. He and I are walking together, the same route we normally take through the the streets that circle our little patch, our little white house with the pink door. We hold hands and talk about our day, commenting on people’s yards, criticizing the drumming skills of the tenant on the second floor of the house near the store or trying to pet the local cats. The sun is low. It’s nice.

Another season, another walk. It’s late fall again, and the air is as crisp as the leaves that skitter, chattering across the empty streets. I’m alone again. Once again, I pass by the well kept property of the elderly woman. She’s in her yard again, perhaps some last minute pruning. She stops me with a wave and a gentle smile.

“It’s been a while,” she says. “I was wondering where you’d been.”

“I never left,” I replied. “But for a little while, things were good again.”

And that’s when I woke up, almost in tears.