MindSpinner

“I love your dress,”
the preschool teacher
told me this morning,
after admitting she’d
forgotten my name.
I don’t wear this dress often:
the bottom buttons,
modestly secured according to
the dress code for teachers,
impede purposeful strides,
the sort that get me to the copier
and back to the classroom
during the last five
minutes of lunch.

In the spring of 2000,
during the long beginning
of an ending,
I bought this dress
for a business trip to Hilton Head,
a planning meeting.
(Once upon a time
and for a little while,
I did freelance work
in Web design.)
I carried a suitcase
containing the dress
and other things new,
a laptop and a 10-pound cake
through three airports
to deboard a tiny plane
on the island, pausing on the way
to the rental house,
not alone, to walk along the docks
where people played in music and light
reflected on water.

Seven years later,
far from a shore I walked on for a day,
I have a dress
I sometimes wear to school,
a shell a little boy gave me
on a stroll down the beach,
a photograph of people at work,
ideas posted all over a pool house,
a memory of friends gathered
(these partners were friends),
the indelible surprise of a wrap offered
when I was cold, and gracious goodbyes.
I have songs.

According to MapQuest,
I am 633 miles (and seven years)
from Hilton Head today.
Funny that I was ever there,
in another world.
Funny that a dress is here
and a shell - artifacts.
Funny what remains.