On an absent day

# Chapter 107

On the road and absent yesterday. Those days are few but unavoidable. 14 hours in an old antique pickup slowly making my way through seven states, a beautiful, fun, but exhausting day. Absent days change the pace and flavor of your life. The goal is to use that in a good way. To sit down the day after, and remember what was different and unique and special about being absent. To learn from it and find energy from it. To find the best of that day of being absent, to gain the best takeaways, especially since you don’t do this very often and miss your routines.

So this particular absent day was in the Fall and there was enough color left in the trees on this endless drive, that it was lovely. There was a cloudless blue sky as a backdrop to the late turning trees and even if they were running toward rust and brown colors instead of reds and yellows, the blue sky set them off and made it quite a show. This absent day was a day of remembering. It was the five year anniversary of my mom’s death. I was thinking about her and missing her and wishing that I could sit down and have a good long talk with her and learn from her wisdom. I missed her laugh and her observant eye about life and nature. And this absent day was a moon setting sun rising sun setting moon rising day since I was on the road so long I got to see all of that and think about both the smallness and importance of my life in light of the celestial bodies in movement. These are the things you can learn and observe on an absent day.