Many years ago I wrote a fifteen minute play about what happens during the hour we gain, and the hour we lose. In one scenario I had a couple who met for that extra hour every year in a parking lot by a ferry terminal- imagining what life would have been like if they had chosen each other over their life partners. (I chuckle remembering where my head was nine years ago…) In the lost hour portion of the play, there was simply a young boy with a shoe box. In the box he placed all the things he wished had not happened to him in the past year, and left it perched on his window sill the night before the clock “sprung forward”.  The things he wished to release were written on bird feathers he had collected during the year, with a very fine point permanent marker. The next morning the boy was allowed to reinvent himself, free from his sorrows ( that we understand are quite numerous for a lad of such a young age) and feel fanciful and full of flight again himself. At least until the next door neighbor shows up and…. That idea resonates even more profoundly with me today, than when I wrote the play almost a decade ago. Permission to let go is a marvelous thing on occasion huh?

I thought it would be fun to share the idea, and ask you one thing you might like to let go from the last year, given the chance. I’ll start the list, and would love to have you leave one  here if you’re able.  Perhaps this post can be that box, perched on a window sill, to be given flight once and for all.

1. How I informed Sam’s first mom we weren’t coming (to visit her) last August. I wish I had just called her. Maybe things would be on track today, if we had arrived at the decision together somehow?

2. All the sadness, hard, and second guessing I feel daily about her no longer choosing to be in our lives, today. I just would like to accept it as her choice, and know that I’ve done all that I can to keep open the door.