The Shortcut

Hannah and I call it the shortcut. In reality, taking it doesn’t really save us any time getting to our destination. It just keeps us from having to stop at a red light so we can wait our turn to go left. It keeps the wheels of the car turning, and, so, it keeps us moving, and that makes us feel we are getting closer to where we need to be.

The shortcut is a secondary road that feeds into my work world and Hannah’s daycare resting just before the main entrance which is governed by a red light. Early this past summer as I approached work one morning I could see from a distance the red light turning from green to yellow. I knew I had no way of making the turn left without stopping as I saw the yellow light transition to red nudging the light into the pattern it must go through before it finds green again. Feeling I knew another way to get to where we needed to be, I quickly whipped our car onto this secondary road. Hannah, not missing a beat, noticed the variance from the daily routine and wondered why we were going a different way. That is when I called it a shortcut. It is also when I had to try to provide an explanation of a shortcut to Hannah.

The next day, we took the shortcut again. Other days arrived and we took the shortcut on those days as well. Soon, we had a new routine. Before long Hannah was calling “shortcut” from her backseat perch as we neared the road.

The shortcut became a way for us to look for the geese sometimes swimming and playing around two different ponds we pass. We also found ourselves looking for a long-necked fowl we sometimes called a stork and other times a heron.

We would drive through a nearly empty parking lot to add another shortcut to the original shortcut before driving across the campus to stop at daycare. It is this short drive when we usually talked about the geese or the other bird-like creatures we may have spotted on our ride. If we hadn’t seen them, we would start looking for them, hoping to see just a glimpse of them somewhere.

Today, I drove that shortcut for the final time with my riding buddy, Hannah, at least for now. She finished daycare today heading off now on her path of being a student, or as much of a student as she can be at age five. A new school for her, new teachers, new routine.

Being five, she may not remember much about her time at daycare as time moves on. She may not remember the names of her teachers or her first friends. That’s okay. There are pictures that can spur thoughts of yesterday sometime later. She probably will also forget the shortcut in a few years.

I may never forget the shortcut though. As long as I work where I do I will have the opportunity to drive it when I want. I understand she may not ever recall the summer we took the shortcut every morning. I will remember it though. Memories can be shared and if her memory won’t take her there, mine will take me there and when it does I will selfishly hoard the good times we shared.

When I take the shortcut I will look for the geese and the long-necked fowl. I may spy a train in the distance chugging through the woods in the distance. I may even hear Hannah’s voice in my mind as she often would look to the eastern sky then proclaim how the sun is waking up.

I’ll take the shortcut from time to time just to keep the wheels of memory moving.