At the end of 2022, I reflected on the previous five years’ themes (posted here) and ended with a teaser:

2023: TBD, I have some ideas, but nothing to announce. Stay tuned!

I had known since November 2022 I was no longer in the “port of indecision” regarding my move to Tybee.  I had finally spent enough time here on my own to know I felt at home.  Post-pandemic widowhood comprised more solitude than anything else; why not spend it somewhere warm, walking distance from the beach?  But I waited a few months to announce it to anyone, just in case . . .

Every Christmas season from 1992 through 2017, the locally-built hundred-year-old sleigh came out of our garage to sit under the front lamppost. 

Saturday, to be exact

As an aspiring author, I’ve been taught to think about themes. Here are the themes I would assign to 2018 through 2022.

This is a true story from March 1991, when I was 31 years old. I originally posted it in a short story challenge in February 2021.

When we talked about it later, Joan told me my face had turned white as a sheet right before I summoned her to the front of the room to take over mid-song.

This is a true story from the early fall of 1985, when I was 25 years old. I originally posted it in January 2021 in a short story challenge

It was neither the first, nor the only, time in my life that the universe took a wrecking ball to my future, but at the time it was the most dramatic.

My sister calls them coincidences; some of them I call premonitions and others I call signs. Maybe they're just oddities or maybe it is some form of cosmic or spiritual communication beyond our understanding.

Whatever it is, here is an example.

You can never know when you get your last toy, and you can never know when you say “goodnight” or “goodbye” if there will be another “good morning” or “hello.” When you realize there won’t be, it’s hard to believe. Nearly impossible. And other times, you find yourself wondering if the 28 years before the last “goodnight” ever really happened. Or were they just a dream? And the plans you made, were they just a dream, too?