{"id":518,"date":"2015-08-04T11:23:03","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T15:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nightowl.owu.edu\/?p=518"},"modified":"2015-08-04T11:23:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T15:23:03","slug":"five-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/2015\/08\/04\/five-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Colodney<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In five years, life will be so different, won\u2019t it be, honey? <\/span><\/p>\n

The kids will be off to college, <\/span><\/p>\n

and this house will <\/span><\/p>\n

echo only with our talking<\/span><\/p>\n

louder to one another<\/span><\/p>\n

as our hearing fails<\/span><\/p>\n

slowly. We\u2019ll turn into the Costanzas,<\/span><\/p>\n

yelling even when we whisper.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the stairs to the second-floor bedrooms? <\/span><\/p>\n

You know the hundreds of times you wiped clean the sky blue walls<\/span><\/p>\n

from the black fingerprints, you scrubbing clear<\/span><\/p>\n

the imprints where Adam, Jakob and Matt<\/span><\/p>\n

used the wall instead of the bannister?<\/span><\/p>\n

We could tell whose fingers the prints belonged<\/span><\/p>\n

to by the height of the mark <\/span><\/p>\n

and when the boys are gone,<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid you\u2019ll hold a rag out <\/span><\/p>\n

looking to clean the stains<\/span><\/p>\n

that aren\u2019t there, and you\u2019ll be lost, <\/span><\/p>\n

wondering what to do next. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And when that happens, <\/span><\/p>\n

we\u2019ll cry but we\u2019ll laugh, too,<\/span><\/p>\n

together<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

then maybe send each of them a text saying \u201chi\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

or even a<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cyour parents miss you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

They won\u2019t think it\u2019s too corny, <\/span><\/p>\n

they\u2019re good boys,<\/span><\/p>\n

and maybe they\u2019ll miss us, too. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In five years we\u2019ll be marking the calendar<\/span><\/p>\n

with black x\u2019s in broken crayon until the next long weekend, <\/span><\/p>\n

the next semester break,<\/span><\/p>\n

when we think they might come home<\/span><\/p>\n

(if they don\u2019t have better plans)<\/span><\/p>\n

and we\u2019ll make sure we have all their<\/span><\/p>\n

favorite foods. You\u2019ll make empanadas;<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll grill burgers and maybe we\u2019ll all share a beer<\/span><\/p>\n

when they tell us they\u2019re now vegetarians. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But until then, this place will be really quiet. <\/span><\/p>\n

And when the house gets hot in late afternoon, <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll count the sun rays blinding me in the living room<\/span><\/p>\n

as I read O\u2019Hara or Ginsberg,<\/span><\/p>\n

wishing you and me and the boys were young again,<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll set the book in my lap and close my eyes<\/span><\/p>\n

as I wait for you to come home, <\/span><\/p>\n

so we can maybe take a bath and whisk<\/span><\/p>\n

the quiet to the woods out back<\/span><\/p>\n

where it can calm the nerves<\/span><\/p>\n

of the buzzing crickets<\/span><\/p>\n

and we\u2019ll be able to hear ourselves<\/span><\/p>\n

flirt again<\/span><\/p>\n

like we did <\/span><\/p>\n

when we were young. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Colodney     In five years, life will be so different, won\u2019t it be, honey? The kids will be off to college, and this house will echo only with our talking louder to one another as our hearing fails slowly. We\u2019ll turn into the Costanzas, yelling even when we whisper.     And the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":520,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions\/520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}