That Was Then ...

 It was the mid 1990’s and I was enjoying a wonderful summer day while completing a landscape project on my hillside. The good news about the blaring music was that it was 1960’s and 70’s soft rock. A genre that I greatly enjoy and fondly reminisce. None-the-less, the seemingly 120 decibel’s exiting her speakers was a bit much even for me. I walked over and knocked onto the wooden screen door. With no response, I hollered, “Terri, can you turn the music down”? Again, no response. Fortunately while dancing to the music, she began a pirouette. It was then that our eyes caught one another. So I attempted one more time, and hollered, “Terri, can you turn the music down”? To which she replied, “Just a minute neighbor, the music’s too loud”! “Exactly”!

Those early years brought a variety of surprises in our neighborhood ~~ the last which occurred in 2007. It was on a Fall day when Terri went across the street offering an apology to a couple little girls. Now a decade and a half later and her ‘15 Year Sobriety’ coin in hand, she says, “That was then”. 

And this is joy ~

There’s not a one of us with whom change is not necessary. But I guess when a “transformation” is so dramatic, so life “altering”, that one can simply pull a coin out of their pocket and exclaim, “That was then”!

Choosing never again to have reason to offer such an apology, those little girls you might say, forever renewed her life. So yes, she has reason to exclaim with joy, “That was then”!

And I can say … there has NEVER been a neighbor quite like Terri. Ha! And I rejoice with her at fifteen years. And here’s to the next ... fifteen ...