Day 172

I'm going on a business trip tomorrow. My first since Damian died. It will be short. I leave tomorrow for a meeting Thursday morning. If all goes according to plan, I should be home in time for dinner on Thursday. The worst part of this trip is that I will once again be forced to wear pants. I know, first world problems and all that. But still, I hate wearing pants. 

I went on a lot of business trips during Damian's life. Fortunately for most of them I was gone only 2 or 3 days at a stretch and almost never over a weekend. As such, I was able to attend most of Damian's school functions. What I did miss out on was whatever drama was happening in our neighborhood at the time. During several of my trips, police, emergency services or the fire department paid a visit to our street.  

One morning, a Korean neighbor knocked on our door and tried to convey to Dawn that something was wrong. Unable to get her point across verbally, she all but pulled Dawn outside and around the corner of the house to show her that woods behind our house were engulfed in flames. That was memorable for for two reasons: First, the fire had been started by our neighbor when he scooped out the ashes from his fireplace and threw them into the woods earlier that morning. The problem was that mixed in with the ashes were hot embers from the previous night's fire. The second reason is that Damian was going through his fireman phase at the time so after the flames were extinguished he got to a private tour of the fire truck courtesy of the Gwinnett county fire fighters who were on scene. We have several pictures from that day. 

Another time, the neighbor's kid ran away one evening following an argument with his dad. Not long after someone called 911 our cul-de-sac was overflowing with police cars as officers combed through the woods behind our houses in search of the errant youth. I think they also had a police helicopter involved in the search. I say "think" because, yeah, I was gone for that one, too. The weird ending to that story is that they eventually found the kid hiding under the bushes in front of our house while Dawn and our other neighbor Mike were standing on the driveway. For expediency, the cops hustled the kid into our house where the EMTs went to work checking him over on our dining room floor. All the while Dawn was trying her best to keep the noise down as Damian, still a toddler or an infant, was asleep in his room. 

The one time I was home when the cops came to our street? The morning Damian died.