Because we are longing for the slightest glimmer of change on the horizon, and because it can be seen.

Day before yesterday I was pulling weeds or raking leaves or some such that comprises my morning rounds on this ranch and I heard the buzz of chainsaws, then the crack of a branch and breathed a gust of dust that came over the back fence.

The property to the rear is derelict and has been for decades, overgrown with monstrous trees and thickets, a forgotten ramble and a pit, with ragged shacks and sheds and a wildlife population so vile that we could only smile and call it Raccoon Lodge. I’d noticed on my strolls when the lot had gone on the market, the near eternity that it had been sale-pending and knew with the noise that the closing date had been crossed.

The routine rumble we’ve always heard on our street has been quiet of late, a deafening lull, as the upgrades and add-ons and even tree trims wait for the return of good days and easy money. It might be awhile coming. It might be a good, bad, sad, tight, taut, crying out loud long time ’til those days are here again. With everything and all getting worse and no way to tell, I don’t mind too much that something blasphemously new and huge is probably about to go up adjacent to me.

I don’t mind anymore. Because about four o’clock yesterday afternoon, after the crew had quit, and the work was done, and I walked into my kitchen, and I looked out the window toward the western sky, I saw the wide open sky, through my own leafy cover, the dreamy blue and the streaming sun, the light that had been eclipsed for so long by the tangle of rotten trees and vines, by the dark of gloom, by an unkempt past. I saw the sun, I saw the future, and I saw the incalculable density of dog hair, glistening gold each and every strand, hair that blankets my floors, heretofore unseen, and I knew the truth with a certainty that I must speak and console you with here.

It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be fine. The light has arrived.

That, and a merciful vacuum cleaner.