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Mom, Dad, Brother and Little Sister climbed into the subway simultaneously. Somehow all four of them fit through the doorway at the same time- not that they were fat, its just unusual to see four people step onto the subway at the same time no matter their size. As they enter their eyes scann the car and they look for seats, but there are none and so they merge into the crowd of standing passengers. Mom and Dad hold onto a silver handrail, and Brother and Little Sister grab onto pant legs and shirttails. Brother’s shoes are the kind that lit up when he took a step, and Sister has a little pink backpack. I smile as they huddle together. Mom is cautious, Dad is stalwart and protective. He wears a strong, thick brown mustache and baggy cargo shorts. He somehow looks disproportionately more attractive than his wife- she is bookish and has thin windblown hair. They are tall, white, probably Midwestern. Their children are small, round-faced, most definitely adopted. I imagine the days and weeks and months the couple anguished over not being able to have children on their own, and then I imagine all the signitures that had to be signed on all the papers to adopt Yuqing and Zhang Le, who are now probably called Stephanie and Jason. Mom and Dad might’ve even gone all the way to China or Mongolia or Butan to pick them up, and I feel bad for not knowing the differences between the physical features of east asian children. Dad does a great job of making up for his impotence by acting protective and strong and by paying lots of attention to the kids. He is a good dad, but not necessarily a good father, and while mom is happy most of the time she secretly resents him for the Sunday mornings he spends watching the Packers instead of going to church. She doesnt mind that he doesnt make as much money as they need, and she knew he wasnt that smart ever since that day she met him in Math class at college and he asked if he could get the answer to problem #2. By the end of the semester they were sweethearts and in the Fall he had bought a ring and they moved into special housing for married couples. It was a tiny two room place made of concrete block with small windows, green carpet and a big metal door with three latch locks. They had a charcoal grill outside on the smooth, cold concrete slab sidewalk. She would smoke on that sidewalk when he wasnt around and then do her best to hide the butts. She thought that they’d have kids right after graduation. Who knew that hers would be made so many years later in China. But they were good kids, and they do their best to behave on the subway, until Stephanie starts climbing the hand rail, that is. They’d planned this vacation for months and were having such a good time and Dad promised Jason that they’d visit the Air and Space Museum. So, once at the Smithsonian stop they all grab hands and leave the train in the same way as they boarded.

Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve said goodbye. And what I mean by “goodbye” isn’t “see you later” or “see you tomorrow.” What I mean by “goodbye” is the kind of goodbye thats meant to stick, the kind where you are leaving and really mean it, the kind when you know things are going to be different from the moment the word hits the air. What I find interesting about a true goodbye is its anti-climatic nature. Its supposed to be the word of closure, of wrapping things up, but it never feels that way. Goodbye should be weighty, it should be definitive, and yet there seems to always be a lingering afterthought that follows it, an “is this really it?” or an “is this the right thing to do?” that pulls the reigns on the power and finality of the statement. As I try to count the goodbyes I’ve said I think of the people that I’ve cared for most. I don’t seem to mind the countless number of acquaintances that have slipped out of the orbit of friendship and away from consistent communication without any sort of closure or final farewell. Its the people to whom I’ve said goodbye that are always the ones who meant the most and the ones who I want to find again.

The metro is only 5 or 6 blocks from my house. I walk to and from the station everyday as part of a routine that should be old and boring by now. But its actually the walk to the station that keeps my entire morning routine fresh. Each day I seem to find something new to notice on my walk, or if there is nothing new then I can rely on a few standard things to happen. I know that the stray cat who likes to dart out from the porch of the red house to crawl under the porch of the blue house next door will do so everyday at 8:07am. I know that Ill see my neighbor and he will refuse to say hello because he’s weird or maybe because he thinks I dont/wont like him because he’s weird and old and gay and lives by himself. After his snub Ill probably realize I left my blackberry or wallet at home, or that I forgot to put on my belt or shave or something, and I’ll have to turn around and walk back home. On my second attempt at walking to the metro Ill pass by the neurotic collie who barks at the wind while running back and forth in her owner’s yard, turning habitual running routes into trenches. I like that collie. I think I like the collie because she reminds me a bit of myself…running in the same circles day after day after day, making a bunch of noise and barking at nothing but the wind.

(WARNING: The next paragraph doesnt have anything to do with the rest of the post, and if this post were to be given to an editor then I am fairly certain that the next few sentences would be promptly and justly cut out. Should you want to skip ahead to the more relevant parts of this post, find the next section that begins with an ** ) So I like the Collie because she’s either a crazy bitch like myself or because she looks a lot like my first dog, Tippy. Tippy (and dont ask me how I, a 5 yr old boy at the time, came up with the name Tippy) was a great dog. But in those days my parents moved around a lot, and we had to give Tippy away when it came time to move to a new house that didnt have a fenced-in yard. Fortunately, my grandmother agreed to take Tippy in so that I could come over anytime and play with her. It was extra cool because grandma owned Tippy’s mother, Heather. Well, after a few weeks grandma got tired of having two dogs to feed and gave Tippy away without telling anybody. I can still remember the Sunday afternoon that we drove up to her house and found that Tippy was no longer in the backyard.

**It was quite windy this morning. So windy that a discarded newspaper had found a new life as a dozen different kites, each page swirling up and around and out- wherever the wind willed it to go. One page found its destiny with me as it tumbled over itself and collided and clung tightly around my leg. It refused to let go for nearly half a block, despite my best efforts to kick it away. Finally, the wind took to another direction, broke the page’s clasp and sent it away in the same tumbling movement with which it had met me.

(Heres the part where I make the turn from interesting observation to cliche object lesson through the use of heavy handed metaphor) As I continued my walk to the metro and left the pages skidding around the sidewalk I thought about something- I thought about how such an insignificant occurrence has such significant roots, how the so many lives and events had to happen to bring that newspaper to its spot on the sidewalk, and how so many lives and events had shaped the course my own life so that I could be there to meet that newspaper at that spot on the sidewalk.

And then I thought of how the winds of destiny (or fate or chance or sovereignty or Calvinist predestination- whatever you choose to call it) blow from directions unknown and usher people and events into our lives that serve to not only move along the timeline of life but act as a catalysts of the kind of people we become. Sometimes the events that shape us are profound, sometimes they go unnoticed until the moment we look to the past and see how a single insignificance turned out to be quite weighty in the whole scheme of things. And then there are the people, the consistent shuffle of souls that shifts throughout life, who tumble into our lives until we kick them away or until they are pulled away by a change in the winds of destiny. And no matter how long we live the wind wont ever stop blowing, bringing on change after change, and all we can really do is bark and howl at it, and then change.