We were on Bainbridge Island visiting the extended family of my sweetheart. We got there after dark, let ourselves in and found a frozen lasagna and a Murder She Wrote marathon.

In the morning the sun rose over a panorama of Seattle and far off mountains that seem covered in more snow then I have seen in several years.

I looked around the room we woke up in and thought about our last visit here almost exactly one year ago.

The walls of the room are painted in chalkboard paint.

My loves aunt is gentle with memories, tentative about discarding people, places and things. In a world where many people find comfort in the disposability of their love, their belongings and even their minds it can be troubling to be different. Holding on is seen as an illness rather then as a reasonable response to the rest of the world letting go.

The chalkboard walls have not been wiped since last years visit.

I see a picture I forgot. Its a sketch of a truck we had not purchased pulling a trailer we had never seen. It was a sketch we made of our plan for the year, a plan we have just lived.

I stood staring for a long time.

I thought whether to erase this dream come true and draw the next one in the event that the chalkboard wall was magic.

I thought of a bigger picture of life. I thought of the home we were in. I thought of the hope I have for a time when the world is not a series of dreams that are lived, checked off, erased and replaced.

I put down an eraser that had been in my left hand while I had considered. I picked up the chalk and I drew sheep in the slate grey field around the trailer and I drew a carseat in the truck.