the thing about geese is..

they can only remember you for a year and one day. this is to say that inevitably, no matter how cosmopolitan their upbringing, all geese return to the wild and they forget the family they grew up with; it is a sad truth that colours one's experience with them. ...but they do remember you for a year and a day - there is the one day a year when they come home, just the one time. Usually it is very early in the morning while you are still deep asleep. You are awaked by a familiar sound, the sound of honking, and so you rush out into the yard with the rest of your family, all of your bleary-eyed. You check the pond and the lawn and find no sign of your old friends. And then you look onto the roof - up to the roof's crest. There are your old friends, standing on the summit, plump as Thanksgiving turkeys, blaring the happy trumpets that lay rejoicing insider their hearts - letting you know for just this one time, as you stand there waving to them, that their love for you is greater than those forcers in the universe that would split any of us apart - that would erase that best part of us - our memories of what once was.