Departures
It was the last day of school, the first day of summer, the soul of spring. Out back Finley could hear the ridiculous games of the neighborhood kids being played, games of logic-less invention and urgent mirth, timeless games with running clocks and dinner bells conspiring against them. Overhead a plane traced a line in the sky. Finley wondered where those people were headed and from where they came. People sitting upright as though nothing at all. What a time to be alive.
Before he knew it the voices of children had faded and he found himself still standing in the yard, paunch of 51 years, Asics over ankle socks, looking up, as always. His line was now a perfect circle, dark and bright.
His father had once called the last day of school ‘the soul of spring,’ and something about the phrase stuck with Finley. He still thought of it all these years later, now a father himself to a daughter quickly outgrowing the idea of him. The last day of school, the soul of spring. When Lola was younger, he'd say it at the beginning of every break, quietly invested in the notion she'd take a fancy to it too. By the end of eighth grade she pretended not to hear him, and he loved her even more for it, his parental heart by then straddling a fault line in full tremble.
His father had said it just the once, and here it had come to mean something more than words to Finley. The last day of school. The soul of spring. Blue skies and youthful freedom and all the time in the world but that time eroding. Nostalgia tethered to the earth by a line of reality. He would think of it every spring for the rest of his life. He would think of it every spring for the next seven years, and then not.
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