If you think that I don't think of you, you would be so incredibly wrong. If you think that I don't wish I could be there, you'd be crazy. But if you think I have no other life and can turn on a dime as soon as my name is called, you'd be assuming too much. I never said I didn't have other things to do. I didn't say anything, matter of fact. I treated you as what you were to me, as my priority. Which doesn't necessarily mean that you lose importance as soon as you're not my priority. Whether or not that's the case depends on other factors. But I will say that one of the things my dad taught me was to always make time for the important things. Time I have, time there will be. I promise. Maybe not now, maybe not next week, but eventually.



It's always irked me when my life shifts. I only somewhat detect it while it's actually happening, but once the shift is made it's very obvious. It isn't really painful for me-- if it is at all, it's a small amount. It's uncomfortable though, for a time. It's like new shoes you have to wear in.

I guess it's painful for other people, though, sometimes. And that's part of what makes it uncomfortable for me, too. I know that in shifting, somebody is getting shifted away.

I've done it before, and I never know how it's going to really end up. It'll always be for the best, but whether it's permanent or not isn't up to me. Either way, it doesn't make it easy. It doesn't make it something that I enjoy watching. I just know that if I resisted, it would be much more painful than if I simply acquiesced.

So I am shifting into this new mode of thinking and living. Peggy calls me a cliff-jumper, and I think that I still don't entirely get that analogy but that maybe I'm coming to it gradually.

But I'm reflecting on the cliffs I've jumped, the shifts I've made and people who got lost in the shuffle. Maybe I'm supposed to be sorrier than I am. I'm not made of stone. Actually, I tend to make myself feel worse than I should. So it's not that I'm not sorry, I'm just not guilty.

I don't shrug off my winter garb because I despise it, I lay it aside because it's getting warmer. I don't need it anymore. To enter a new season means letting go of the one before, changing one's life to either embrace it or make efforts to protect oneself against it.