It is so very odd, the things we leave behind.

It was cold enough to see my breath early in the morning yesterday as I walked back up the hill to our home. The sun hadn't been up long enough to really warm things or completely burn off the fog.

The trees are just beginning to leaf out now, and when they're back lit by the earliest sun of the day they glow, a green that just exults in the wonder of spring, all the possibilities of beginnings.

The quarter mile road up the side of the mountain to our home has several switchbacks to reduce the grade, to make the climb easier on a vehicle. Things are still quiet down in the valley, but when you make the final turn just before our home the silence is broken and all around you is birdsong, finches mostly, warbling intricate melodies.

It's an incredible welcome home.

We have the birds because of my late father-in-law, a passionate birder who practically beat the spousal unit and I into putting up feeders. He knew how wondrous it would be up here if we would make the birds welcome. It's one of the things he has left behind.

Poppa's been dead now almost seven years. That hardly seems possible. When he first died the gap in the family fabric seemed like a chasm, but day-to-day life has a habit of mending tears. It's not that I don't love him and don't miss him, it's just that he's been gone a long time now. Mostly now I only think of him during the holidays, his birthday, the significant dates such as that.

Oh, and when I hear a bird and I don't know the song. I always think of Poppa then because he could always tell me who the bird was.

So very early yesterday morning I was walking up the hill home and I saw the sunlight kind of glinting off something just off the road as it heads up past our home towards the sugar bush. I couldn't think what it could be so I walked on up to see. Hooked on a dead branch nestled among the red spring trilliums was Poppa's cup.

Poppa was always helping one or the other of us out with our projects. Although arthritis had made a mess of his knees and made walking very painful, he would cheerfully head up into the woods and help the spousal unit's older brother in the sugar bush. He loved the water from a spring just past our house, and he left an old tin cup there so when he passed he could have a drink if he wanted it.

Poppa's legacy is all around me, but it's easy to forget that. My husband, my daughter, even the place where I live are all tied to this man and the choices he made in his life.

I'd forgotten all of that until yesterday morning when the sun just happened to pass through the early spring leaves at just the right angle to glint off that cup. The sight of it brought back so vividly the complicated man who left it behind.

It is odd, the things we leave behind.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 263.97 miles (424.7 kilometers)
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers