Nothing But Time

We stared out the ninth-story window at the cityscape planted against the backdrop of the mountains we call home.

“See those peaks over there? The ones that jut up against the mountains in the distance?” I asked her, pointing far north of home.

“Yeah.”

“That’s Boulder.”

She turned from the window at the sound of her name and I sat down in the waiting room. You see, though she may still get Golden and Boulder mixed up in her mental map of this world, now that she’s fourteen, I don’t get to – or need to – go into the doctor’s office with her anymore, at least not this time.

It is as I sat there waiting for her to emerge, free of the stitches that had kept her pieced together over the past two weeks, that the idea emerged:

We would leave here and go grab donuts. (Okay, in full disclosure, the donuts had been on my mind since that morning.) Then we’d set out to take the long way home. Around the zoo and down 8th Avenue where we’d admire the brick houses of the old town neighborhoods. Up Speer Boulevard; she’d point out the theater and I’d point out the college campus. North on I-25 to Highway 36.

“36?” her dad would ask when we called him. “What? Are you going to Boulder?”

I still wouldn’t be sure, but I’d think so. By this point, her music would be plugged back in, and she would have chosen a song to test me.

“The Weeknd?” I’d ask.

“Good job,” she’d praise me.

“This is the song I had stuck in my head all morning,” I’d tell her. I’m sure she’d face the window before arching her brow.

We’d pass a Best Buy a few minutes in to our westward trek.

I’d turn to her, “Should we stop and get that thing for the TV?”

“I was just thinking that,” she’d say. “The next closest one is 15 minutes ahead… In Boulder.”

And that would settle it. We’d stop for gas, get the TV thing, and take the road home from Boulder. (Incidentally, we’d also pass through Golden, so mark that down as ‘mischief managed.'”)

Her music would continue to fill the space between stories and a running commentary on the sights out the window.

God how we needed this. So we would make it happen. From the waiting room to the long way home, we’d have nothing but time.

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Today’s slice was inspired by Ali’s Miles (and Motherhood) post. It was her early morning connection that made me promise to devote today’s slice to a memory that I won’t wish would drift, drown, or drowse away. This one is here to stay.

https://twowritingteachers.org/