Back when I had the Saturn (Edith), there came a day when I needed to get to my OSGM shift and…uh…couldn’t. Because it had snowed. And I couldn’t find my car.
Exaggeration? A leeeetle. But Edith had the mass and weight of approximately a dozen malnourished kittens, and after the snowstorm we’d had, I didn’t have a prayer of digging her out even to travel the scant five miles to work.
Enter Greg and the Jeep. The Jeep was (is) mighty. It soared into the parking lot like a steel Viking galleon, gleaming in the chilly moonlight. I climbed aboard with a lusty, “Heigh-ho!” and off we went, sailing a sea of white to the office.
So here we are in 2006. The Saturn and its pitiful front-wheel drive is a dim memory of nearly half a decade past, and Myrtle the Subaru Forester has been escorting me to work ever since. She has AWD. And suddenly, it’s no longer Greg and the Jeep fishing people out of the Unplowed White Lands, it’s Steph and the Forester.
I mused on this while I ferried the stranded to and fro, picking them up, taking them home. I remembered that perfect night when Greg picked me up — the world bathed in silver, the unblemished snow crust, the air freezing in my lungs. We had so many things ahead of us. No one had gotten sick and died yet. Children had yet to be born. We were all immortals, frozen in the ageless world of a winter night.
Time has moved on, just as surely as the snow was eventually slashed to pieces by wandering feet and melted by the implacable sunrise. In the meantime, I’ve assumed the rank and file of those who came before me. I hit a small but significant milestone this week: I was directly responsible for training and hiring someone to become my webby successor. I’m proud of the teams I’m assembling and guiding, even as I simultaneously wish I had more time to devote to them.
We are not immortal, but there are circles in the snow, and legacies will continue to pass from manager to employee just as surely as they go from parent to child.
If I’m lucky, that’s a good thing. In the meantime, me and the big green taxi continue plowing our way through the snowfields, waiting for the perfect, ageless nights when we’re needed.
4 responses so far ↓
Steph, when I realize how much you’ve grown and matured and changed and stayed the same in the years I’ve “known” you, it amazes me and makes me feel old. And then I realize how much *I’ve* grown and matured and changed and stayed the same in that time, and it amazes me even more. This was a great post.
I am even more moved…..but it was nothing that wasn’t expected from this special child of mine. Love you…MOM
::wild applause for the poetic prose::
Steph,
Once in a blue moon, I come back here to see how my old pals are doing. I get a big smile reading over past entries in your blog. How long ago it seemed; our world was unfolding as we made it. Those memories are bittersweet too, as those who were there will remember. My son now watches Gwendolyn and I play games on our PCs now, and I often tell him, “See? Before you were born we had to READ and IMAGINE what all this would look like. Now Daddy’s friends make it so we can see it.” To which he usually responds with something like, “Daddy blast that bad guy before he gets you!”
Such is youth.
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