The lift

By Bill Pearse on September 26, 2025 • ( 5 )

For as excited as I was to be back in Europe I knew I’d miss my daily routine back home. Especially the drive to the park in the early mornings down the long, straight road. It’s curled like a tongue, down and up, like entering a mouth. Past the golf course with its fog and the damp, dewy greens. Rolling into the park entrance then deciding which trail felt right for the day. Making a wish for a loved one, aiming my stick at the sky.

Today I saw a black bear, heard it first, then it regarded me before it ran off. It was Charlotte’s eighteenth birthday and I played back that day in my head, driving Dawn to the hospital in the middle of the night, stopping for gas in West Seattle. That first picture of Charlotte and me; I’m wearing a hospital gown and cap, 2007. A year later we’d be out of that house and living in the suburbs. The conveyor belt of life, the lift.

Lily is in Germany now with two of her friends staying at my mom’s. Asked if I could front her some money for a Dirndl and the beer festival (they’d planned to go to Munich but I lobbied for Stuttgart, the Cannstatter Volksfest). Glad they’re going there instead; it’s just a half an hour from my mom’s.

Tracking Lily with my phone, it shows her on those German cobblestone roads in my mom’s village now, somewhere in the circle ⭕️. How clearly I can see it sitting here. Soon, me on a plane on a screen in a jet inching closer, over the pole, crossing the IDL.

Better than routines maybe is leaving them for a bit. Waking in the dark in my mom’s old house and creeping downstairs to light a candle, fix the coffee and write. Then a walk up the Himmelsleiter, heaven’s ladder, through the vineyards and down the wooded valley where the apple trees will have dropped their fruit and the air will be different and sweet.

The nighttime clouds are lit by what little moon or light there is, have joined like puzzle pieces in the sky with just a few more left. Soon I will take my car down the long road and go back to the park: making a wish for a loved one, aiming my stick at the sky.