After I voted today

I looked up late this afternoon and saw the moon, almost full and very bright and low and big. A few geese flew across the pink sky far away, above the treeline and just beneath the moon. Probably they were different geese than the ones who live in the parks here all year long. I think those geese just chase little kids and leave the soccer fields covered in poop and get in my way when I try to run on the creek trail through the park. They’re pretty much jerks. With wings.

When I see geese flying like I did tonight, on their way someplace warmer like normal geese, I always think of Houston. Probably that’s not what pops into *your* head when you see geese flying, but maybe that’s just because you weren’t there with me that one time when I stepped out the back door of my dad’s house in Houston just as a very intense formation of geese flew over the roof of the house behind me. I think they were flying north; I don’t imagine that geese would need to fly south from Houston. I bet it was getting warmer back home and they could finally go back. I didn’t know they were there, but we did this seamless, choreographed (though not) thing where I opened and stepped out the door just as the first one flew over and the sound made me look up. I saw them and stopped and they flew over so low, just barely skimming over the top of the house while I was totally still except for my chin tilting up toward them as the last ones in line flew over. It was just a second. I could feel their focus, though. Those geese were serious and determined and headed to a specific place. When we were working with a trainer with Ace, she said when I walked him I needed to be in charge of the walk, and that it would help if I had a picture in my mind of where we were headed. If I thought about that, Ace would sense it and know that we were headed somewhere and that I was in charge. He’d follow me. That’s what that migrating goose vibe was – the dogwalker vibe.

So maybe it was their collective focus down so low close to my head, or maybe it was just that I’d never seen geese so up close before, but something carved those couple of seconds into my memory. It was humid and the sun was going down. It was just a really cool thing to see and to feel.

We spent a lot of time in Houston looking up at the sky. At storm clouds and lightning, at that sun. At the stars. My brother and I used to sometimes lay on the top of our dad’s silver Buick to watch thunderstorms roll in or the sun set. Or we’d lay the lawn chairs in the back yard all the way back to look up at cloud shapes or an electrical storm or fireworks on the Fourth of July. The sky is more of a presence there. More active than it is here in California, at least weather-wise. Like, you wanna keep one eye on it for trouble. But it’s also just thicker and heavier. The humidity sometimes demands your full attention and you can’t help but squint at it convinced that you’ll see the wet fog and clouds that you can feel in your lungs when you breathe.

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