“The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.” — Audrey Hepburn
It was nice to hear your voice last night—the last voice I heard before the day folded itself away. Who would’ve thought that working on a Google spreadsheet could feel like a moment of connection? But it did. You did. We did.
After a day that spun like a top, wobbling toward its close, Luna called on her commute home, lamenting the day’s mishaps. I listened, half-focused, working behind a glowing screen—contracts, job cost sheets, emails, all blurring together.
She pulled into the garage, switching seamlessly from CarPlay to Bluetooth, the transition marked only by a brief pause before the familiar rhythm of her heels:
Click, click… stop. Click, click… click, click… click, click, click-click-click… stop.
Then the door to the kitchen swung open. The shuffle of a purse and bag being set down, the sift of fingers through the mail. The creak of the door opening for Bella. The call for Stein—the 110-pound mastiff ball of unrelenting fur that stumbles, licks, drools, and exists in a constant state of joyful chaos.
“How good are you at making checklists?” she asked, knowing full well that I, like any modern-day kindergartener, could navigate a Google Doc with ease.
“I’m decent,” I replied, waiting for the reel-in.
“Oh, great! Could you maybe help me with a checklist for a visually impaired student? It needs to say: Glasses worn in class today… with the days of the week in columns.”
Before she finished, I had already opened a document, invited her as an editor, and started formatting.
“Check your email,” I said. “I sent you an invite.”
She fired up her laptop, and then—there she was. A tiny pink profile circle appeared next to mine on the document.
“There you are,” I said, smiling, my laughter lines crinkling—lines etched by joy ten times more often than by sorrow.
“Something like this?”
“Oh, yeah! Could you make the font bigger?”
“Sure.”
“Yes, that’s perfect. You’re amazing.”
And just like that, those next few minutes stretched into a conversation about the day—the little things, the big things, the nothing and everything. Eventually, she got ready to walk the dogs, and I made my way toward what I hoped would be six solid hours of hibernation.
We said our I love you’s, our goodnights. And as she strolled through the familiar streets of Lawndale Drive, chatting with her college-age daughter, I imagined the sidewalks, the streetlights, the quiet lawns. In my mind, I walked just a few paces behind them, listening, smiling at every opportunity.
And as I closed my eyes, I felt it—satisfaction, fullness. A connection stitched together not with grand gestures, but with something as simple as a checklist, carried across miles on some invisible satellite tether. A delicate thread, embroidered with today’s date, time-stamped in the softest, most undeniable way: W/L.
BB Grey--musings 
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