Hash Marks on the time-line - Crystal Ball circa 2005

There was a simplicity to it all and it made him feel safe.  The routine only changed with the seasons and the length of the grass in the yard.  In late summer he would walk out his back door and look over the hayfield for those bold deer who had nibbled at his garden all of his summers and his shrubs all of his winters.  Two loud hand claps would crack the silent evening air and echo back from the hillside as the animals bounced off.   It had become so routine for the deer that they hardly even raised their tails in alarm anymore. Their leaps were hardly leaps and the distance they ran each night shortened as the summer passed.

Now, in late August, they didn't even leave the field.  Their reaction to the old man seemed more obligatory than startled.  They turned to stare at him with their ears erect.  He laughed at his own impedance.

 

The air felt dry on his face and damp at his feet. A small maple off by the creek was offering up early hints of bright pigment.  He knew that a light ground fog would settle into his valley this night and the racket that the cicadas that had made all summer long, would soon wane into the cool nights that lie ahead.

Beautifully melancholy is how he felt this time of year.  He had felt it as young man the first time he had seen a parent and college-bound teenager passing him on the interstate with a school year's worth

belongings stuffed into the back of their car;  That was the first fall he wasn't going back.

He it felt now as he stood next to his car, stuffed with his youngest daughter’s possessions.  She was leaving in the morning.

 

A lump worked its way up his throat while a tear worked its way down, inside the gully of the wrinkle that ran from the corner of his left eye over the top his cheek bone.  It felt good to be sad.  It was routine