I miss my dad. A year ago during this time period, I found myself in a very similar but wholly different place. I was and am highly contemplative about my values and my blessings. I was coping with a different kind of loss then, but a deep, crushing one just the same. On this day last year, I posted a poem:

It’s when you learn just how to drive it that you have to trade it away.

It’s when you know just how to make the layout right that it’s time to call it a day.

It’s when you finally have the words in your mouth that you can’t think of anything to say.

It’s when you finally begin to understand someone that you have to give her away.

This has infinitely more meaning to me today. I have always been fascinated with the one-year-ago thing, because we all live our lives in seasons. Our wisdom is judged by the number of seasons we have seen. And with the shift of temperatures comes a shift of understanding.

My beloved, yellow, Lance Armstrong wristband fell off yesterday. It expired. I first put it on many weeks ago, the moment I found it lying on my computer keyboard, packaged in plastic… the day after my father called a family meeting to tell us he had deadly cancer.

My parents bought four as gifts for all of us, before I knew what they were and long before they became a national craze. I never took the band off, not once. Not when I sat beside my sedated father in the hospital bed, or after he departed forever. To me, the band embodied two great athletes I greatly admire, two men who were to live long lives despite cancer.

Now I idly fuss with my sleeves and feel for the wristband that isn’t there anymore.

But change is, of course, good. Yesterday, as a concious step in this transition, I made a bold choice that will probably surprise most of you — I ate at an Asian-food restaurant. I forwent my aversion to the cuisine and shed a part of my identity. I went to Kitima, a Thai restaurant in Hillcrest. I ate Sidewalk Noodles with an “abundance” of chicken. It tasted very foreign. But appealing. I was in the company of great friends. We conversed for hours.

Oh, and I have decided to accept the pleas of dozens of you and try sushi for the first time. Who’s going to be first to expose me?