“At six in the morning the stage drove away into the sage-brush, with her as its only passenger, and by sundown she had passed through some of the primitive perils of the world.”
~Owen Wister, The Virginian~

Laura comes over almost every other night to work on homework. It’s not that much but she’s taking a summer class, and it’s enough that I’d already started tidying up the living room when she texted. I vacuumed her spot on the couch but she didn’t sit there this time, she sat on the smaller one which I hadn’t vacuumed in days. It was closer to large plug-in cord for the chargers.

Her dad comes out to camp sometimes. He’ll get up and be here in time for them to bike early in the morning in the 6 o’clock timeframe. This summer they’re supposed to ride 100 miles in Iowa somewhere. It’s not really a race, it’s just where you can go and ride for however long it takes. It makes me happy to think of her dad coming. It’s just one of those dad things that to anyone who sees it says, “I love you”.

This weekend they rode 40 miles. Ethan went with them. He said he was going and I asked if we had a bike good enough for that. He said her dad was bringing one for him. He never was a kid who biked, but seems to have taken to this new form of exercise. Another weekend they did 25 miles together. I still don’t understand the expenditures of energy or where it all comes from.

Josh and I attended a funeral in the morning. One of his father’s aunts had passed, and she’d also been a resident in the wing where I am sometimes present. Having no husband or kids of her own, she’s also one of the ones who for years has planned the annual reunions every summer in August. I was a teenager the first time I went. They meant a lot to his dad. He looked forward to them as well as us being there.

“Have you seen the moon yet?”, he asked over text while I was inside clicking through an online module that was due in an hour. He was outside on his night walk, and I had seen the moon, rising behind the house before it passed above the trees. “How silly”, I thought, when I hesitated, nearly missing the moment until asking, “What am I even doing in here?” I saw it again, but this time higher.