Call Me Maybe

She just called.  She called as I was about to cut the grass that she cut all summer.  She was at her spot by the Atlantic and I was at my spot behind the lawnmower. 

I'm glad she called.  I should be grateful that someone her age and someone with that much going on would think of me in the middle of an afternoon. 

Someone my age and with not much going on may be thinking of someone like her and may not call because she might be too busy.  Why would she want to hear from me?  To tell her about how the garden has mostly gone to weeds, except for the sunflowers that we watched grow all summer long?  Those sunflowers now bob their heads in the slight afternoon breeze and wait for the goldfinches to play among them.

Is that how they used to think about me?   That I had too much going on in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon? Is that why they didn't call on a regular basis and even today it doesn't happen as much as I would like?

Is this the story we tell ourselves that keeps us isolated, waiting for others to make the first move?

When I think of her sitting by the rocks on the Atlantic, maybe I should call. 

Do I think that I am so important that they should call me?  Don't they know that I have a big yard to mow this afternoon and even though it is still warm enough that I am in short sleeves, summer has turned the corner.  The sun is lower when I start the mower.  I won't sweat the way I did a month ago, but I will still wipe my brow a time or two before I finish.

I will miss that sun above the tree line from a month ago.  I will miss that spot by the side of the building.  The one that had all that sun at the end of May and now stands in the shadows.  May-when she was still taking math tests less than a half a mile from where I am pushing this mower.  When the spot by the Atlantic was still a few months away.

I know life keeps moving- just as the grass will keep growing once I put the mower away.  But that doesn't mean I should miss her any less. It doesn’t mean that I can’t think back to July when the two of us came over here to cut the grass in 90-degree heat and then went up to the river for a swim.  Or the morning when we were working in the garden and the gnats were swarming us every time we turned around.  It just reminds me that I will be happier -and grateful-when she calls me from a pile of rocks while watching the Atlantic pound against the shore.