When is the Future?

I was talking to a friend about my idea to buy a Belltown condo. He and his partner are interested in moving in the opposite direction -- out to the country, perhaps on one of the San Juan Islands. Where my motivation is to walk to work, his is to telecommute from a remote spot. When his partner got a new job where he can telecommute, all of a sudden the present turned into the future for half of the pair. If Travor was going to telecommunte anyway, why not move to the islands now? Zach wasn't ready for this.

Sometimes the future has arrives sometimes like a train on a schedule. Other times, it pops up when we least expect it.

When I started to look at condos in Belltown, the future came up out of the ground like an early crocus in the spring. You know it is coming, and you know about when, but it still is a surprise. I was surprised that Jack and I had such synchronicity, that we both thought that the time for the future was now.

My other future, the one I knew was inevitable since the day she was born, arrives tomorrow morning at 7:45 a.m., when Claire-Adele gets on a plane for College Park, Maryland. That had always been a someday, a point in the future that we could and couldn't imagine.

I am surprisingly sad about this. I thought I'd be immune to these emotions, that my happiness for her would override my own sense of loss. That didn't happen. I don't want to rain on her parade, be a wet blanket snuffing out her excitement and anticipation. And yet.

I got her (and me) some flowers, the all purpose gift, appropriate in times of both happiness and sorrow. And so we share them, and each enjoy them for our different reasons.