Fire and Rain

One night last week C was crying in bed because we can't go to Cataumet Gardens anymore. We haven't been able to go there in a year and a half because it closed but he picked last week to get upset about it. First he was crying because he remembered that we used to go there and see frogs. I assured him I knew other places in town where we could find frogs (our back yard for example), but then he countered with, "there's nowhere where we can go see peacocks."
He had me on that point, there is nowhere else that I know of, within a five-minute drive of our house, where we can view peacocks.
I thought it was weird that he was having this meltdown 18 months after the fact, but then isn't that the way things are sometimes? Feelings can take months to process. Someone can die and for a while it just seems like it's been a long time since you've seen them or maybe they've been out of town. Then finally it hits you that you'll never see them again.
You can move or chance jobs and then months later realize with regret that you'll never be at that place in your life again.
But those aren't things C should have to grapple with yet, so damn you Cataumet Gardens for closing and making my five-year-old cry. And damn you too, Tom, for making me cry; because I always thought that I'd see you again.

song: Fire and Rain • artist: James Taylor