Little m Long a

It’s been a few weeks.  I bet you thought I had forgotten.  I bet you wish I had forgotten.  Sunday Sonnets have returned, at least for this week.  And no, I have not gotten any better at composing sonnets.  I’m not studying sonnets or reading sonnets for inspiration.  Fact of the matter is, I really don’t even know what a sonnet is!  I know it’s supposed to have 14 lines but I think the lines are supposed to have some sort of meter and quite possibly rhyme.

I’ve got 14 lines.  That’s about it.  I just picked the moniker because I thought it sounded good.  I  could have just as easily called the series–Hey Look, I Wrote a Poem!  But it’s not really poetry either.

So, anyway.  It’s been quite a long week full of activity, last minute school preparations, end of sumer blowout family fun days, kittens, and more.  Yet somehow, this weeks Sunday Sonnet was inspired by a fairly traumatic personal experience for me where in I replaced my wallet, my companion, of some twenty years.  The replacement wallet came from a little Amish leather shop we had visited on Tuesday.

It lasted 3 days!

You Never Had a Chance

It’s not your fault, believe me.
You had no control over how this would play out.
It’s not you, it’s me.
Really.

You tried.  You gave it a go.
I tried you also, but my heart was never in it.
Don’t get me wrong, I like you.
I do.

But you’re not the same.
You never will be.  You never could be.
We had a history.  A lifetime.
You had three days.

I gave you a chance, but you never really had one.
Twenty years is just too much to overcome.

(Last night, I pulled out my sewing machine and repaired my dear old wallet.  The way I see it, it could last another couple of years.  Maybe then, I’ll be ready for a replacement.)

Twenty years.  That’s a long time.  Who could have imagined that we would have been together this long?  Certainly, not me.  I’ve polled friends and family.  Some were able to toss up some impressive numbers of longevity themselves–but not twenty years.  No one came even close.

We met in the most ordinary of places, purely by happenstance.  I certainly had not sought you out, nor you I.  I am sure of this.  Sometimes the most meaningful and enduring of all relationships begin in just such a manner.  Ours was to be no different.

Through good times, you have been with me.  And bad.  You’ve seen my happiness, my pain, my sorrow.  You have been with me for the best times of my life.  You were there when I first kissed my then to be wife.  You were there when I picked out her ring.  You were there the first time I got a stamp in my passport, the first time I set foot on foreign soil.  You were there when I was married.  You were there when we bought our first home.  You were there when my kids were born.  You were there when my mother passed away.  You have been privy to my every experience for the past twenty years.

Saying goodbye literally tears apart my soul.  I knew this day would come, it had to.  But honestly, I did not think it would be this difficult.  I’m going to miss you old friend.

I bought that wallet twenty years ago in a little leather shop in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.  Ten dollars!  Best ten dollars I ever spent.  Yesterday, I retired the poor thing.  It was coming apart at the seams and was wearing through in a couple of areas on the corners.   It was not an easy thing to do.  Today, I’m a little sad.  Missing a dear friend.