It’s that 5 minute time again and today’s prompt is
STAY
“Oh, won’t you stay just a little bit longer?” The song is dancing in my head now…but fast on it’s heels is the echo of a voice from the past. My husband’s grandmother, Mamaw, saying as we get ready to leave her house: “What’s your hurry, can’t you stay a little longer?” She was a widow in her 80’s, living alone, when we first met and with every visit to her house there was that refrain…
I look at it now and I understand it from her end of the driveway. Some of us crave for folks to stick around a while and it’s especially poignant at this time of year when relatives arrive for Thanksgiving or Christmas. They come in a flurry of excitement, and they leave in a rush of goodbyes. It’s a hard letting go, that moment, when they leave again.
This year, if you are the one coming and going, pause a moment to whisper a love note in that person’s ear – the one who would like that long one on one visit, the one who would hold your face in the palm of her hand once more, the one who would have you sit beside him as he reads the sports out loud to you; you know the one.
And, then give yourself a pause to remember that one day you will be the one who will be saying “Stay?”
Ding.