Closing Time

“Closing time, time for you to go out to the places you will be from…  So gather up your jackets, and move it to the exits, I hope that you have found a friend; Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

–     Lyric from “Closing Time” by Semisonic

A tough week.  As it closes I will board a plane for my last trip “home” to Wisconsin.  The next time I fly to MKE, I’ll be a visitor.  The ‘Burg is about to become a “place that we will be from.”  Walk-across-the-street relationships become fly-across-the-country relationships or burn-up-the-cell-minutes relationships.  Our Hawkeye flags will fly in a sea of Bevo Orange, after 15 years in a sea of Bucky Red.

It’s closing time of sorts.

Big step, right step, difficult step, exciting step, scary step.  It’s time to take the step.  It’s time to begin anew, in a new place.  Together.

That said, it’s closing time, too.  A chapter ends.  A new one begins.

And every new beginning does, in fact, come from some other beginning’s end.

In other words, endings are an interpretation, not an event.

Here’s hoping that our beginning links friends from the end of the last chapter to those in the new chapter.  Here’s to bonds that can never be broken and memories that are permanently imprinted on the minds of Jodi, me and The Three.  Here’s to some some other end’s beginning.

Here’s to making a difference in a new place, and praying we made a difference in the old one.