The Bridge - Part II

What can Part II be? The boy is gone, the last of the Mohican's, the last one to pack up and say adios (he finally did learn some Spanish).  Our parenting days are limited now.  They are not a 24-7-365 thing anymore.  I'm not saying that my parenting days are done, just limited.  For instance, decisions on the red mustang (loud, fast, not so safe in the rain, cop-attracting, girl-attracting, distracting red mustang) allowed at school the first semester of college is still a parenting decision that needs to be made.  Actually, that decision was made, revisited, made again and guess what?  It is being revisited again!  We have tabled this conversation for the time being because we are in the middle of crossing another bridge.  This one is all about us.  Me and my husband.  It is about appreciating the quiet, the sound of the little dancing indians run off to hoot and holler somewhere else.  It is about waking up to a man who is, for today, just my husband and not the man who will negotiate the long and winding trail of parenting 24-7-365.  Today, we negotiate a different trail - over a bridge that brings us to a place of quiet.  The children (that’s what I call them when they are civilized), were quite surprised to find that immediately after the last brave took his tee-pee (hammock really – and a really cool one too) and left, so did we.  We traveled to Shenandoah National Park and hiked new trails.  On the way we stopped at Hershey Park just to get a free candy bar at Chocolate World.  We saw a bald eagle, some falcons, some hawks, a rattlesnake and a passive aggressive deer.  After the deer incident we drove to South Carolina.  As I sit and type this I see the ocean and hear the sound of the waves and my husband quietly snoring.  Both sounds rock my soul.  Today the bridge we cross, we cross hand-in-hand, sojourning our way along for a few weeks without restless natives.  The trail we blaze now is our own, on our own, over the bridge . . . and we proceed on.