On Sunday, my best friend and I took a day trip to southern Michigan to enjoy the beach, the local vineyards, and one of my favorite restaurants. The Stray Dog is the first exit in, last exit out pit-stop along I-94 of the Michigan/Indiana border, complete with rooftop dining that looks out over Lake Michigan.

So I was utterly heartbroken when Rach and I walked up to a chain-link fence that surrounded my beloved eatery’s charred remains, now a collapsed heap and a bulldozer parked in its stead. It burnt down last month.

“But who will give me my fish tacos and Oberon?!” I cried, to the amusement of the ice cream parlor patrons up the street.

We found someplace else to eat, a little Italian cafe with great pizza and a giant berry tiramisu in a wine goblet for dessert. It more than sufficed, but still, as we walked past the the Stray Dog’s ghostly lot with full bellies, I contemplated how life never waits for us to be ready for change, ready for gratitude, ready for healthy perspective. Even faith in the small things, like where to enjoy a good taco and the sunset, is more fleeting than we realize.

The Self-Unseeing
by Thomas Hardy

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

 

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