1. Not being able to enter their house when the rain started one night, we sat around the fire with Katie and John and listened to it spit and fizz as it hit the flames.
2. On walks with my baby grandson, I learned he liked the feel of the long soft branches I tickled his cheek with better than the feel of my fingers.
3. I now know the exact color of each friend’s eyes, as we exchange long looks instead of hugs when we say goodbye.
4. Because Gigi’s was closed, we celebrated Ellen’s birthday roaming Edgewater for two hours on a cold April day. Then we sat on the tops of two fence posts and looked down a long time on the lake’s gray expanse.
5. So far, I’ve catalogued 27 kinds of silence on my street.
6. The lavish 100th birthday party I’d planned for my house became a quiet front yard afternoon, where just the five of us dressed for the 1920s and drank from my antique amber glasses.
7. One day it occurred to me that people were happy to be with me even when I didn’t offer up large platters of food in a perfectly-tidied house.
8. One night, I Zoomed to New York to join Kora in singing “Twinkle-Twinkle” and realized I could have been helping Elizabeth with her little daughter all along.
9. On Mother’s Day, the manager brought each puzzle to the window at Apple Tree Books, until I pointed to the one of “Golden Girls” and nodded my head.
10. Locked outside of our Art Museum, Rosemary and I sat by the Lagoon and watched seven new goslings climb under their mother’s skirt one by one, until they were all completely hidden.
Cindy Washabaugh is a writer, community outreach specialist, and organizational consultant who lives in Cleveland Heights. Her most recent work is a poetry chapbook, Sings the Body (Finishing Line Press).
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