spring

At noon on the Saturday between the Friday when Christ died and the Sunday when he rose, Kylie and I packed a hammock, a lunch, and novels with dragons in them. On our way to the park, we stopped at the game store for a new board game. After a record-breaking snow of a winter, the sun and the air smelled of spring, tulips, and tank tops. I smelled of sunscreen. I had been here exactly a year ago, the day after I received the first e-mail that said, “I love you.”

At the park, we hiked in a little ways and found the two trees we used last year next to an empty picnic table. I pulled out the hammock and its forty feet of webbing and began tying knots. “See now,” I said, “don’t you feel bad that we’re out here and Coconut is inside? Don’t you want to put the cat on a leash?”

“Nope!” Kylie said. We tested the hammock. It would hold us about a foot off the ground – the perfect height for swinging and digging lunch out of the backpack simultaneously. Instead of reaching for lunch, though, Kylie reached for the new game, opting to devour the directions. Inside the box sat six cardboard sheets of punch-out game pieces, waiting for me and their cathartic punching. Resting in-between Friday and Sunday, and waiting for nothing, we passed the time in the sun.