It’s a grey morning on the drive to work. The road at the end of my driveway is littered with debris from the storm that blew through last evening. And by “blew through” I mean it howled with a vengeance. Almost no rain.

The power blipped off for about 10 seconds around 8:00. Long enough for me to cringe at the thought of trying to sleep without the AC. Plus it was early in the evening, and I hadn’t had a shower yet. I hate sticky hot sleep.

I am spoiled. I admit it. The modern convenience of AC has made me into a wimp. I didn’t grow up with cool conditioned non-humid air blowing through a vent into my bedroom. When it was 80° at 11:00 at night, I laid there stuck to the sheets and took it like a boy; the attic fan humming outside my bedroom door, sucking in the moist thick air.

As I top the hill and make the turn onto Hwy 27 at the Callaway Country Store, I feel a familiar churn in my stomach. When I was a kid, we called that feeling butterflies. Like standing at the bottom of the ladder to the 10ft diving board at the pool. Like walking through the doors to your high school for the first time. Like holding your daughter’s arm in the fold of your arm right before you walk her down the aisle.

Those who know a lot more than I do say there’s a connection between the brain and the stomach. When something in life occurs that is new or exciting or uncomfortable or frightening, the brain sends out little signals to your stomach that make your gastric juices do backflips.

This is different from nausea, for example, after eating the leftover meatloaf that had expired days ago. You don’t feel sick. You just feel like something is fluttering around inside your stomach.

Like butterflies.

Butterflies are more comforting than birds, or say, bats. To think of that nervous feeling as bats would be disturbing. If it was bats, you might end up hunched over the toilet for hours.

But butterflies are non-threatening. They’re cute. They’re harmless. No one runs from a herd of butterflies. Think of the Cloudless Sulphur hordes that gather around the rim of a mud puddle in September. There must be a hundred of them. And when you walk up to say “Hi”, they flutter away in mass like a yellow cloud of dust.

This morning they are in my stomach.

I know why I’m nervous, but it doesn’t make sense. Not really. This is my last week of work at the tree farm. Today I begin the first of many last things. The last Monday. The last payroll. The last work schedule. The last lunch box. The last ride out to the farm.

Could be my last ham & cheese sandwich. Who am I kidding?

I started clearing out things last week and more this past weekend. Cleaning out desk drawers. Taking things down off the wall. I had pictures of my family from 20 years ago. They were covered in dust and spiker webs. Personal items that have found their way into my workspace over the years.

On the list: one rain jacket. One umbrella. Two 12-gauge buckshot shells. A bottle of Dawn dish soap. A key fob. A fan. A drawer full of caps. An architects rule. One tractor. A bottle of Ibuprofen. And books. A boatload of books.

I threw the melted butterscotch candy away.

When this week is over, except for a few handwritten notes by the computer, it will be as if I never existed here. Cleaning up has been kind of like wiping down a crime scene. My fingerprints on this place will be gone.

Butterflies.

In the big picture of life this is small potatoes. I know that. But letting go reminds me a little of letting go of a grown child. You invest, and sweat over its growth, and lose sleep over its struggles. But the time has come for what’s left of this business to stand up without me.

The nursery is gone but the tree service remains. And I’m not worried in the least about that. Cory is more than capable of taking care of business.

I remember after Dad left the foundry, he would get a phone call every now and then. A furnace wasn’t working right. Some casting came out all wrong. The molding machine line broke down. They needed his input. But, after a while, the phone calls stopped.

More butterflies.

It’s nice to be needed. But even if I’m not needed, I know I will be talked about, though not with the legacy a man might want. Cory assured me the other day that when something goes wrong, they will blame me.

“That was Paul’s idea,” they’ll say. Cory said I should be good for at least a decade of failures.

Go ahead. I can take it.

I want to say this right here and right now. I could save it for some future day. I’ll probably say something to him directly. But you should know. There’s not a finer business partner to be had than Cory Flynn. We’ve known each other for nearly 30 years and have been in business together for more than 21 years.

Partnerships can go south real easy. I’ve seen it happen. But not this one. We’ve stood our ground through some pretty tough seasons and built this company together all the way. I am beyond grateful for that.

I’m leaving Diversified Trees in good hands.

So, yeah, on the way in to work this morning my stomach was fluttering around. A light tickle somewhere inside the old belly. I hadn’t been thinking about anything ominous. No foreboding overtones. It just came out of nowhere.

I guess, even if my brain is okay with the whole idea of retirement, my gut hasn’t caught up to that level just yet. I’m still processing this life-changing event.

Stupid butterflies stayed with me all day.

Which is okay as long as they don’t turn into bats.