A closing chapter
My poor little Luke is sick today. I got that call that every working parent hopes not to get at the office – day care calling to let you know your kid is under the weather and needs to go home. He’s got a chest cold and was running a fever. So, I tied things up at work and headed out to collect the kids a bit earlier than normal.
I turned the corner onto the street the center is on and saw a crane and a Bobcat in the parking lot, and as I got closer I saw the pilons in the driveway entrance to the lot. Today is the day they changed the sign in front of the building. No longer will the former sign be draped in the large, temporary, plastic sign with the Bright Horizons name and logo. Starting today, the sign is a large, bright sign that lies at the edge of the parking lot, perpendicular to the road so passers by can see it without fail. Let me tell you, it’s bright and large enough, I don’t think NASA will miss this sign, but that’s beside the point. They had already removed the former sign and were working on moving the electrical connections from the old sign’s location to the new.
I parked across the street, and as I walked across the street, I noticed that they had also added the Bright Horizons name and emblem on the front of the building itself, situated between two windows at the front. There is certainly no mistaking what this place of business is now.
Less than one week following the date that marked one year since the loss of Benjamin, the center is now free of any association with the former business, whose name was launched into national attention last January after the tragedy. For those still associated with the two remaining centers, formerly Minee Subee, this is the final step to being further from the stigma that the former business name now carries. I think this is the ray of hope that we needed, too, which tells us that the business is solid under the new ownership of Bright Horizons, and that we are all moving on.
I continued in and collected my children, and I held their hands as we left the building. As you can imagine, the Bobcat and the crane were a huge hit for Luke, who stood in amazement at the machinery working in the parking lot. His eyes got big, his voice high, and his excitement was nearly contagious as he yelled, “Wow, look at that crane, and that digger!!”. The wind continued, and seemed to get sharper with chill, so I rushed the kids to the car and got them buckled in.
As we pulled away from the parking lot and the kids admired and commented on the new Bright Horizons sign, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds that had been hiding it. As we’ve done so many times before, the kids waved to the building as we drove away, saying, “Bye Minee Subee”.
Yes, kids. Bye Minee Subee.
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