no pic

Nice out here this morning, too dark to read the weather bar with temperature and humidity, but the breeze is cool, gentle, and pleasant. As my orange cap says, Life Is Good. Quiet now too, the shrimp boat having puttered round the channel bend and home to her berth in StAndrews Marina. Life is good. Not always as good as my orange cap proclaims, not as good as it was forty-eight hours ago, but good.

It just won’t go away will it, the sadness, swelling in chest and throat. My years, I never could weep until the day I sold my house (well one other Time long ago in Time, not in God years but in Time) and since then it’s come too easy. Not manly, is it, we don’t do this. I realize it’s too soon and getting through takes Time, but each of us is gift to someone, and 

  there never seems to be enough Time

  To do the things you want to do, 

     once you find them 

Jim Croce, 1973, remember? I do.

What I learn in Time is that we don’t belong to each other as we think, as we feel, we’re gift, and Time is what my father used to call an Indian Giver (no offense bitte, no offense). Life is gift, and so are those we love.

Life is short, and we haven’t much Time

to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be quick to Love, says the blessing, and make haste to be kind.

Ray wasn’t mine even the years I felt he was. He just kept moving through life and Time, gladdening hearts. Loving and being loved. He belonged to many people and many people belonged to him, all of them gifts, most of them generations of high school students. Each of us thought he was ours. I wanted him to be an Episcopal priest and have a church, his church would have more children and young people than he could count; but he decided being an Episcopal deacon was his avocation, he already had more children and young people than he could count, and he wasn’t about to give up being their teacher. And when the time came, I didn't even like giftng him to another church.

Time catches up, and gift is taken back, and all of us who thought Ray was ours are stunned. Time also heals, doesn’t it. I certainly hope so.

No pic this morning, I couldn’t get a decent time exposure of Bay and lights. Ever since moving here I’ve not been able to get the shots I wanted, but I wouldn’t complain aloud because I knew Ray would offer to teach me, and I knew he would find me the worst student he’d ever had.

T

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