Left Behind

The weather being what it is, it was not exactly the sort of day one would normally chose to go get an ice cream cone, but that is what we did. After our healthy low-calorie lunch, we headed off to the new ice cream parlor in town for a treat. The success rate for new businesses in this town is dismal, so we don’t hold out too much hope that this one will succeed, but the ice cream is good. Really good.

And seeing as Richard had errands to run at the markets and at the post office, I had him drop me off at the library so I could read the newspaper and perhaps prowl the stacks for something to leap out at me and beg me to take it home. The book I am currently reading,

is wonderful, but I have to read it in small bits because it such powerful things to say. All sorts of light bulbs are going off as I get a better understanding of the relationship we had with our dog.

His parting words to me as I hopped out of the truck were...

“I hope I don’t go off and forget you...”

We both laughed. Ha ha ha...

So I discussed with the librarian the impending winter storm – we now supposed to get 12 inches of snow tomorrow – and we hunted down the most issue of the community newspaper, which ate up a few minutes. And then I sat and read it. And then I checked out the  “new book” shelf... and then I wandered by some of the nonfiction books – picked up and put back one on the Navajo code talkers in WW II... and one on nurses who were trapped in Bataan...and one about a railroad through India... and a really old edition of an even older book by Alexis de Tocqueville...  and then I wandered back into the lobby just as Richard walked in the door.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said. “Do you remember what I said as you were getting out?”

“Yeah." Pregnant pause. "Did you forget me?”

“I got all the way to McDonald’s....”