May 09th, 2023

     It's getting a little easier to block out a 30-minute window to sit and write, as I listen to the construction of new apartments being built behind my house. I could throw a rock and hit one of the buildings, that's how close they are. We used to have deer, fox, raccoons, and all kinds of other creatures come eat the pears from the pear tree next to our house. When we first moved in 21 years ago, the house next to us wasn't there. It used to be a nice, big yard, not only where my kids played with their friends, or I trained Cooper, our beautiful, big black lab who was here one day and gone the next because the huge, secret mass of cancer hidden behind his ribs decided to burst, but the deer would also bed down for the night. We would turn the lights off in the dining room and the kitchen and sneak to the windows off the back porch. I would carefully slide the window down, trying so carefully to not make it squeak. The kids would be giggling and pushing at the lower window, trying to get a good spot to see because when the window was down, and I shined a flashlight in the yard, a dozen glowing eyes would pop out of the long grass near the wood- line and stare at us.