It All Started With A Note...

On the kitchen counter asking her, “Please remember to go to the bank.” When had she forgotten to do anything?

Her frustration goes back quite a ways but not so far that she’s forgotten how happy she was not too long ago. She didn’t feel trapped by her life but devoid of choices. She only made those best for everyone. Everyone else.

Standing before him requesting a $10,000 cashier’s check, the teller failed to ask for identification. They knew her but usually did anyway. Instead of scolding the young man, she filed the information away.

Accompanying him to their security deposit box for the deed to the house, she grabbed it and her passport.

From that point forward, the decision had been made, in her mind. And a very short time spent on the phone determined which flight and when.

A word was never said to anyone (not true, except to her) although she had mentioned it in passing to him just one time before. She’d leave a note saying “Please don’t worry”.

A small bag was all she needed to grab when the taxi pulled into the driveway. It was the beginning of “her” life again for as short as that would be.

Pulling up curbside to the International Terminal, she sat frozen for what seemed like an hour until “Joe” startled her saying, “Mrs. F.?”

Next thing she really recalled was the family sitting down for dinner at 6:00 just as they always did. The only evidence, of anything, was her ripped up note deep in the bottom of a trashcan in the garage.

Calling her at dusk after the dishes, “Meet me in the street.” Where they always did.

The first words out of her friend’s mouth were, “You couldn’t do it.”

“Come with me.", she said.

“Where?”

“Paris.”

“I hate Paris.”

“Spain. But on the water.”

“Spain is perfect.”

Ten days later, they were sipping Rojo at a table in the Barri Gotic district of Barcelona.

Comfortably silent, happy, alone in their thoughts.