There are days when the puddle seems unusually quiet, and lately, our families of Canada geese have been noticeably absent. Throughout the summer, we watched them raise their young, navigate the shallows, and move from one end of the water to the other. They became such a familiar part of our days that their absence was easy to notice, even when there were plenty of other visitors to keep us company.
Today, I was sitting on the patio during a particularly difficult phone call. At one point, I needed a moment to collect my thoughts, so I looked up toward the puddle. And there they were, five familiar geese waddling through the shallow water as though they had never been gone.
I couldn’t help but smile.
Unlike some of our summer visitors, the geese tend to remain around throughout the changing seasons. We’ve watched them through the heat of summer and the cold of winter, sometimes wondering how they manage to find anything appealing about either extreme. And considering the option of flying somewhere else whenever conditions became unpleasant, I can’t say I blame them for occasionally disappearing. If I could fly, I suspect I’d take advantage of that freedom myself.
As they made their way through the water, a light sprinkle of rain began to fall. Nothing particularly remarkable was happening. The geese weren’t putting on a show, and there was no grand reunion or announcement that they had returned. They were simply passing through a familiar place, doing whatever it is that geese find important on an ordinary October afternoon.
But their timing mattered to me.
I had been caught up in a conversation that required more of me than I had anticipated. My attention had been somewhere other than the little world beyond the patio, and for a few moments, I had forgotten about everything happening outside that conversation. Then I looked up, and there was something familiar, something uncomplicated, and something that asked absolutely nothing of me.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the changing seasons and what it means to watch familiar visitors become less frequent. Our herons have already reminded me that some goodbyes arrive gradually, without our knowing which visit might be the last. There is a certain sadness in watching a season begin to close, particularly one that has given us so many opportunities to observe, learn, and appreciate the lives unfolding around us.
But the geese reminded me of something a little different today.
Not every absence is a goodbye. Sometimes the familiar things in our lives are simply somewhere else for a while, carrying on in ways we cannot see. Their absence doesn’t mean something has ended, just as their return doesn’t necessarily mean something new has begun.
Sometimes they are just passing through.
And perhaps that’s enough. We don’t always need to turn a moment into something extraordinary to recognize that it gave us something we needed. The geese were simply being geese, the rain was beginning to fall, and the puddle was continuing with its ordinary afternoon.
For a few moments, I had the opportunity to be part of that ordinary afternoon, too.
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