December 13, 2022

Home Alone

      We wish we could remember when the daycare center closed.

      It has been on the corner, just down the street from the grade school and the grocery store, for as long as we can remember.

      But now, it's dark. The door is always closed and the laughter of children is never heard.

      The playground out back looks more lonely than photos sent back from the moon.

      The enormous tree that oversees the playground behind the shuttered building must be the most forsaken of all. The tree is 80 years old if it's a day. Generations of young ones played under its shade, hugged its trunk, and kicked its fallen leaves over the years, years, and years.

      Did the children decorate the tree for Christmas? Again, we cannot remember, but it's not a lie to imagine the old tree smiling in its own way when a Christmas tree would be carried into the building. When the children would sing Christmas songs. When they threw the snow that the old tree drank up.

      If the daycare center ever opens again the tree might not be around to see it. The old girl looks to be leaning, a bit perilously. Certainly a parent or two noticed this and became filled with worry.

      But this Christmas it stands. Silently enduring the winter cold, wondering where the children have gone. --TK