Susan’s mother needed help. She had lost her husband to a heart attack a couple years earlier, and now she knew that she couldn’t keep the house alone. Susan went on Sunday to spend a week with her mother in the difficult work of deciding what to take to an apartment, what to give to the children, what to donate, and what to discard.

For a week at least, I was alone in the house. The nightly phone calls didn’t make up for the quiet rooms and the lonely breakfasts and the dinners for one.

It was high summer, and by early morning the city air was hot, heavy and gray. The slow and noisy commute to the office was a trial, the work day was a conviction, and the slow drive home was the sentence. My boss appreciated me for my work. I had seen that appreciation fade for other people when their contributions fell off for a quarter. I’m good at what I do. But it’s draining to know that at a division meeting, every other person in the room is hoping you fail, so they might take your place.

By Wednesday life was intolerable. On Wednesday afternoon I squeezed my remaining staff meetings into Thursday morning. Most of my clients were at their golf resorts, or at their lake homes, and would not be trying to reach me. That evening I packed a small bag with clothes, and a backpack with what I would need to sleep two nights in the woods. I packed one banty bamboo rod in a fiberboard tube, and the little reel with the four weight line, and flies for a couple of days of fishing. That evening I told Susan where I was going, and we said we wanted to see one another for an early dinner on Sunday.

Thursday was as hot and dismal as every other day. I made it through the morning, and left the office at noon. My bags were in the trunk. At a fast food place I bought twelve hundred empty calories to carry me through the afternoon. Traffic was light on the way out of the city, and I drove fast on the interstate, with the radio tuned to jazz. Continue reading Two Miles In… the story beyond the poem.